Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Sabotage of Philadelphia strike shows need for rank-and-file rebellion against union apparatus
AFSCME’s betrayal of the eight-day Philadelphia city workers’ strike once again exposes the union bureaucracy as an industrial police force for capitalism and its two political parties. It confirms an iron rule, with no exceptions: So long as workers remain under control of the apparatus, the only possible outcome is a sellout.
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The AFSCME bureaucracy shut down the strike in the middle of the night precisely because the strike was gaining momentum and strength. It had widespread support among the city’s working class, while uncollected garbage continued to pile up in the streets. The strike disrupted the city’s July 4 concert after top performers refused to cross the picket line. And on Thursday, 3,000 white-collar workers were set to vote on strike action, threatening AFSCME’s efforts to block a united struggle.
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The struggle in Philadelphia is taking place amidst a bipartisan social counter-revolution. At the federal level, Trump and the Republicans passed historic cuts to Medicaid and other social programs to partially fund trillions of dollars in tax cuts. The Democrats put up no real fight in Congress because they support the basic aim of his “Big Beautiful Bill.”
In Philadelphia and every major city across America, the Democrats are preparing massive cuts to school systems, transit networks and other core functions which go far beyond another round of austerity. They represent the permanent dismantling of social infrastructure on which millions of workers rely.
The working class is being bled white because American capitalism, wracked by terminal crisis, is lashing out to find new sources of wealth, which can only come through robbery and violence on a massive scale. The lurch towards dictatorship expressed by Trump, and the expanding drive towards World War III, are the inevitable political expressions of this process.
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The struggle in Philadelphia is far from over, and the establishment of the Philadelphia Workers Rank-and-File Strike Committee points the way forward. Rank-and-file workers must insist that they have the sole right to decide the course of their struggle, not unaccountable officials earning six-figure salaries.
2. Mamdani appoints top DNC and Obama adviser in bid to secure Democratic Party establishment support
The vicious hostility to the Mamdani campaign from dominant sections of the ruling class is motivated by fear over the broad opposition to inequality and US imperialist policy that underlies his upset victory. New York City is gripped by a deepening social crisis, with over two million residents—one in four—living in poverty, nearly twice the national average. Child poverty has reached 26 percent, while median rents have surged to a record $3,900 per month.
Mandani’s own response, expressing the politics of the DSA, has been to accommodate his program to big business and shift further to the right. In interviews following the election, Mamdani stressed that he has a “vision... for every single New Yorker, including business leaders.”
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In the two weeks since his victory, Mamdani has moved rapidly to court the Democratic Party establishment and present himself as a reliable defender of capitalist stability. This trajectory expresses the essential function of the Democratic Socialists of America, which exists to channel mass opposition back into the dead end of the Democratic Party and smother it.
3. Germany: former Left Party leader calls for collaboration with far-right AfD
Sahra Wagenknecht, a former leading member of the Left Party, who split to form the anti-migrant BSW, is calling for closer political cooperation with the far‑right and fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and for it to participate in state governments. In several interviews and video statements, she argued that the previous policy of political exclusion and the rhetoric about a “firewall” were “wrong, undemocratic and counterproductive.”
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Since the federal government adopted the largest rearmament program since the Nazi era and aligned all aspects of its policy around preparations for war and military support for Ukraine in NATO’s conflict with Russia, announcements of massive social cuts and austerity measures across all areas of society have become daily occurrences. This policy of rearmament, financed by social rollbacks, is incompatible with democratic structures and is transforming traditional political relationships.
The AfD was deliberately cultivated, promoted in the media and supported by far‑right networks within the state security apparatus and intelligence services, with the aim of steering growing popular opposition to rearmament and social cutbacks into a racist, nationalist channel—and suppressing it. This development was enabled by the right‑wing policies of nominally “left‑wing” parties—the SPD and Greens—which previously opposed war and advocated social improvements. Today, these parties are the main drivers of war and the Left Party differs only in that it conceals its support for government policy behind rhetorical gestures about diplomacy instead of war and greater social justice.
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It remains unclear how far the collaboration between the BSW and AfD will extend, but Wagenknecht has already made clear that she is prepared to do whatever is necessary to realize her nationalist agenda. Die Linke, her former party, is not an alternative—it is part of the shift to the right.
4. Ukraine: Zelensky government hails Trump’s resumption of weapons deliveries
In a complete about-face from the position his administration declared last week, United States President Donald Trump announced on Monday that his government would continue to send weapons to Kiev in order to fuel the ongoing proxy war against Russia that has killed hundreds of thousands in its over three-year history.
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Trump’s 180-degree foreign policy turn is being publicly celebrated by the right-wing dictatorial government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, following a disastrous public meeting at the White House between the two presidents, who was just months ago was accusing Trump of living in a Russian “disinformation space.”
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Despite having been allocated $182.8 billion in US support since the beginning of the full-scale war in February 2022, the Ukrainian government continues to be totally dependent on foreign aid to function.
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Whatever the full story behind the rapid vacillations of Trump’s policy towards Ukraine, the ultimate goal of the Trump administration is to uphold the predatory interests of US capitalism, as demonstrated by the “critical minerals” signed between Ukraine and the US in April.
As Trump has demonstrated, despite his campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine in “24 hours,” he is just as committed to war as his predecessors, as long as it maximizes the interests of US capitalism.
5. Australian Labor government detains refugee from Gaza, threatens deportation
In a brutal attack, the federal Labor government yesterday ordered the detention of Maha Almassri, a 62-year-old Palestinian refugee who fled Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza last year. Almassri has had her visa revoked and faces the prospect either of deportation to an active war zone, where Palestinians are massacred everyday, or of indefinite imprisonment in Australia.
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Without the slightest grounds, Almassri, a grandmother, has been treated as a criminal or a terrorist. Her house, where she lives with a relative in the working-class Sydney suburb of Punchbowl, was raided by police, including federal agents, around 5 a.m. yesterday morning.
Her brother Soliman told the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) the “family thought IDF [Israel Defense Forces] was at her door.”
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Having survived what must have been years and decades of trauma, Almassri is once again enduring state persecution.
After the raid, Almassri and her relatives were informed that her visa had been cancelled on the basis of an adverse finding by the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO). The domestic spy agency had declared that Almassri was “directly or indirectly a risk to security” and therefore “fails the character test” to remain a visa holder.
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The timing of the raid was significant. It occurred amid a major escalation of the bogus campaign to conflate all opposition to the Israeli war crimes with antisemitism, which is being spearheaded by Labor.
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All defenders of democratic rights must demand the immediate and unconditional freedom of Almassri. There should be a campaign for her liberation throughout the working class, including in the southwest suburbs of Sydney, where there is a massive Middle Eastern community. Such a campaign should extend into the factories and workplaces, including with preparations for strikes and industrial action. This fight is a key component of the broader struggle against increasing authoritarianism, genocide and imperialist war.
6. Australian government prepares assault on privacy for under-16s social media ban
Because official identification documents such as passports cannot legally be used to check online users’ ages and track individuals, the government commissioned in November 2024 a trial of different technologies to “assure” an online user’s age. More than 50 companies entered the trial. The government is expected to reveal its conclusions by the end of July.
This will lead to a major attack on individual privacy forced on all Australian social media users as a result of the anti-democratic ban.
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The concern around YouTube—a platform with a well-known emphasis on curating both educational and entertainment content for children—highlights that the legislation’s real aim has nothing to do with alleviating mental health problems or improving social interactions of children.
In fact, children’s charity UNICEF and Australian youth mental health foundation Headspace have both raised concerns that the ban will affect the ability of youth to stay connected with family and friends.
Labor’s proposed proscription on social media use for an entire cohort of the population is the first of its kind by a government in any so-called democratic country. It has been followed by similar initiatives in Britain, Ireland, Singapore and Japan.
Any claim that the attempt to prevent children and teenagers from accessing social media is bound up with mental health is a cynical fraud.
Youth mental health issues are on the rise not because of social media, but because of the destruction of social and living conditions, which are being exposed through social media.
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What the ruling elite in Australia fear above all is that social media, by exposing the immense social crisis that is unfolding, is playing a critical role in radicalising an entire generation. Youth are bypassing the mainstream media outlets to find their news on social media. While there, they are also encountering new ideas and perspectives which are anti-establishment, anti-war and opposed to the interests of the ruling elite.
The attempt to ban social media access for under 16s is intended to neuter that growing radicalisation and prevent the spread of oppositional, above all left-wing sentiment.
In an extraordinary act of imperialist intimidation, President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday the imposition of 50 percent tariffs on all products exported by Brazil to the United States. He directly linked the trade war measure to the ongoing trial of former President Jair Bolsonaro for the January 8, 2023 fascist coup attempt, denouncing the proceedings as a “witch hunt.”
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The tariffs, which come into effect in 20 days, will have a profound impact on the Brazilian economy, with the US ranking as the country’s second-largest export market, trailing only China.
Representatives of Brazilian agribusiness, which massively exports products such as orange juice, coffee and beef to the US, were deeply alarmed by Trump’s measures. The same is true for Brazil’s steel industry, whose large exports to the US had already been hit by an increase in tariffs to 25 percent in March and later to 50 percent in June.
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Significantly, Trump’s announcement follows the BRICS summit, which was hosted in Rio de Janeiro last weekend. Initially formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, the group added half a dozen more countries last year.
In a confrontation with the Trump administration, the BRICS summit’s final statement called for a comprehensive reform of the UN; advocated that each country establish its own regulatory framework for large technology companies; criticized protectionism, condemned tariffs and barriers that harm international trade; and repudiated recent attacks on Russia and Iran, one of the countries that joined BRICS last year.
Nevertheless, the summit—and Lula’s leadership in particular—did everything not to upset Washington and never named the US as the perpetrator of the criminal bombardment of Iran.
8. Netanyahu orders Israeli military to build massive concentration camp inside Gaza
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has formally ordered the Israeli military to create plans for the building of a giant concentration camp on the ruins of Rafah, where the population of Gaza would be moved in preparation for their forcible expulsion, Haaretz reported Wednesday.
The Israeli newspaper reported that Netanyahu made the order at a meeting of Israel’s security cabinet on Saturday, before he left for Washington to meet with US President Donald Trump.
Wednesday’s report by Haaretz adds to the growing mountain of evidence that Israel is actively moving ahead with its ethnic cleansing plan, despite the presentation in the US media that Trump and Netanyahu are seeking “peace” and a “ceasefire.”
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The camp would be “built on the ruins of a destroyed city lacking even the most basic necessities of life,” the Euro-Med monitor reported. “The zone will be placed under strict security control, with severe restrictions on movement, including a ban on exiting. This effectively constitutes the establishment of a closed mass concentration camp, where the population will be forcibly held outside any legitimate legal framework.”
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The involvement in the US-Israeli ethnic cleansing plan by the Boston Consulting Group, one of the largest corporate consultants in the world, has created a political crisis at one of the pillars of the global corporate establishment.
9. Federal jury rejects most serious charges against rapper and music industry mogul Sean Combs
It is no defense of Combs to point out the hypocrisy of the entire business. Murder tens of thousands of women and children, and the US establishment will roll out the red carpet. Hire two prostitutes for a sex party, and there are six months of screaming headlines and a full-blown federal prosecution. The trial was grotesquely ugly, and a deliberate distraction.
Noteworthy as well is the fact that the facts about a truly criminal enterprise, the late Jeffrey Epstein and his intimate connections to leading politicians from both parties and a wide swath of ruling class America, were being suppressed even as Combs faced public pillorying as Satan himself.
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While many troubling aspects about Combs and his lifestyle emerged in the courtroom, the jury found insufficient evidence to convict him of the widespread criminal conspiracy painted by the prosecution.
10. Texas governor rejects responsibility for mass flood deaths
Texas Governor Greg Abbott compared the mass flood deaths in the state to losing a football game in a press conference on Tuesday. In response to a question as to whether he would launch an investigation into the failures of the state and local government to prepare for such floods, following Abbott’s own admission that over 100 people had been killed and many more were still missing.
As of this writing, the death toll has risen to at least 121 across six counties, while 160 are still missing. Tragically, this has included at least 36 children in Kerr County alone, including many from a girl’s summer camp.
In response to a question asking if he would launch an investigation into “who is to blame here,” Abbott instead attacked the reporter who posed the issue. “You asked and I’m going to use your words, ‘Who’s to blame?’ Know this, that’s the word choice of losers,” Abbott said.
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The fascistic Texas governor has spent $11 billion since 2021 on so-called border security through “Operation Lone Star,” deploying the Texas National Guard to the border, yet somehow there is “no money” when it comes to preventing deaths from a flood.
Meanwhile, a contingent of 13 Mexican firefighters arrived in the state over the weekend in order to assist with the response under the command of the Mountain Home fire department and Texas state police. The team, part of Fundación 911, is assisting in the most heavily impacted part of the state along the Guadalupe River in Kerr County, which accounts for over three-quarters of the death toll, at 96 people.
“When it comes to firefighters, there’s no borders,” Ismael Aldaba, founder of Fundación 911, in Acuña, Mexico, told CNN on Tuesday. Aldaba said that locals in Texas were “welcoming to our team from Mexico.”
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This humanitarian action flies in the face of the anti-immigrant bigotry peddled by Abbott, Trump and the Republican Party.
Trump’s Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem, in her time as Republican governor of South Dakota, refused to send National Guard troops in response to historic floods in her own state of South Dakota, instead sending them to the Texas border to help with Operation Lone Star. The stunt failed to make her Trump’s running mate, as she had hoped, but it did gain her the position as head of DHS.
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The financial oligarchy, which Trump and Abbott represent, those who fund both parties to the tune of billions in both legal and illegal political bribes, are absolutely opposed to any social spending. Every dollar spent stopping dozens of little girls from drowning at a summer camp is money that could have been used for the military, concentration camps and—last but not least—lining their own pockets. Their political spokesmen make sure to show they won’t in any way divert from these objectives through their callous and downright disgusting words and actions.
Susan's story began almost four years ago when she took a job at an Amazon warehouse to provide for herself and her family. Like other fulfillment centers, the one she worked at in Ohio was large and fast-paced, employing hundreds of workers around the clock to process hundreds of thousands of items each day and load them onto trucks for delivery to customers or for shipment to other distribution centers.
12. A class-based catastrophe: US suicide rate jumps 37 percent in a quarter-century
The United States is in the throes of a profound and escalating public health catastrophe: a suicide rate that has soared to historic highs, claiming nearly 50,000 lives in 2023 alone, the equivalent of the population of Galveston, Texas. This crisis is a chilling indictment of a social order that prioritizes profit over human life, leaving vast segments of the population to contend with despair, isolation and economic ruin.
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The risk of suicide is particularly acute among youth, many of whom face a future increasingly devoid of security and hope. The 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey paints a devastating picture: nearly four in 10 high school students reported persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, and a staggering one in five seriously considered attempting suicide. Female students are about twice as likely as males to experience such distress.
LGBTQ+ students are two to three times more likely than their heterosexual peers to report suicidal thoughts and attempts.
Between 2014 and 2023, the gun suicide rate for black youth aged 10-19 more than tripled; the rate among Hispanic youth in the same age group nearly doubled during this period.
These figures reflect the compounded pressures faced by young people in a society where quality secondary education remains elusive for many and spiking tuition prevents young people from accessing a college education or saddles them with massive student debt.
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The elderly, America’s fastest growing age group, are also bearing an unconscionable burden. Despite comprising only 16.8 percent of the US population, individuals aged 65 and over account for approximately 22 percent of all suicide deaths. The suicide rate is highest among the 85-plus age group, at 23 per 100,000, with men aged 75 and older having the highest overall suicide rate.
This overlooked epidemic is compounded by the misconception that depression and suicide are normal aspects of aging. Rather than being a revered by society after putting in decades of work and caring for their families, older adults are left grappling with loneliness, grief over lost loved ones, declining health, and the crippling financial troubles that can be a trigger for suicidal thoughts.
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Social isolation leading to suicide, particularly among the elderly, is not a natural phenomenon but a symptom of a society that prioritizes “personal responsibility,” i.e., absolving society as a whole of any responsibility for providing healthcare, housing, education, decent-paying jobs—basic human rights—as the financial aristocracy pursue austerity, war, police violence and attacks on immigrants and the most vulnerable in society.
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The rising suicide rates are a damning indictment of a society that produces immense wealth for a few while subjecting the majority to crushing economic insecurity, social isolation and chronic distress.
An overhaul of the profit-driven private healthcare system is a prerequisite in any suicide prevention strategy. Without a fundamental reordering of societal priorities America’s suicide crisis will continue its devastating trajectory, exacting an unbearable human cost.
A statement from the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (Canada):
Enough is enough! Postal workers must deliver an overwhelming “No” vote to this rotten contract. But we must be clear: the Carney government has already prepared the next move—binding arbitration. That means no new offers, no right to strike, and no democratic say—only a decision imposed from above....
That is why a powerful “No” vote must become the starting point for a real fight based on a new strategy to win our demands through the mobilization of the immense power of the working class across Canada and internationally.
The working-class neighborhood of Prenestino in the southeast of Rome was jolted awake last Friday morning by devastating blasts at a nearby refueling station.
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Had the blast occurred a few minutes later than it did, the injuries may have been a lot worse as the adjacent property houses a children’s sports camp that was destroyed by the blast.
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The Rome explosion and injuries attest to the importance of the rank-and-file investigation into the April 7 death of US Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. The circumstances surrounding his preventable death are being investigated by rank-and-file autoworkers with the support of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC). The investigation is breaking the conspiracy of silence by the company, the United Auto Workers union and the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and is fighting to hold those responsible to account.
15. United Kingdom: Jeremy Corbyn’s new party and the lessons of Syriza
It is nearly a decade since Corbyn was catapulted into the Labour leadership with a huge mandate to fight the party’s Blairite wing. Instead, he beat a constant retreat, capitulating to the right-wing on all fundamentals: membership of NATO, retention of Trident nuclear weapons, insisting that Labour councils enforce Tory cuts, and refusing to challenge the mass expulsion of his supporters slandered as “antisemites”.
16. Veolia recognition strike in Sheffield, UK: Unite stages bogus “mega-picket”
The “mega-picket” held Wednesday at Veolia’s Lumley Street depot in Sheffield, marking 11 months of strike action by refuse workers for recognition of Unite the union, confirmed warnings made by the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS). Far from breaking the isolation of the dispute, the event was a stage-managed display of performative solidarity by the union bureaucracy.
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National unions including the University and College Union, National Education Union, Public and Commercial Services Union, several Trades Councils (Sheffield, Barnsley, Leeds, Liverpool), “We Demand Change” linked to Jeremy Corbyn, and the Socialist Party’s National Shop Stewards Network sponsored the “Mass Picket”. The leaflet declared, “The strike has reached a critical stage and needs our support.”
The low turnout exposed the hollowness of such declarations. The event was a choreographed exercise to shore up Unite’s leadership and the trade union apparatus. Sheffield and Birmingham refuse workers have shown real determination, and their action can galvanize broader working-class opposition. But this is something the bureaucracy dreads as it would mean direct confrontation with the Labour government and its locally controlled authorities.
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To open a way forward, workers must build rank-and-file committees—democratic organs of class struggle—to establish direct oversight of their struggles and determine strategy.
“Critical to victory is the ability of workers to mobilise solidarity action, not just from other refuse workers, but from council employees throughout the UK and Veolia workers internationally.”
17. UK Labour government welcomes report calling for curtailing of jury trials
These proposals would roll back centuries of struggle for democratic rights. Jury trials began to be standardized after the abolition of the Star Chamber, made up of Privy Councillors (representing the monarch) and common-law judges, with the Habeas Corpus Act of 1640. This was a product of the political and social ferment that was to erupt shortly after in the English Civil War/Revolution of 1642-51 between Royalist forces and the Parliamentary (New Model) armies representing the emerging bourgeoisie and allied squirarchy, which saw the beheading of Charles I in 1649 and brought major advances in the rule of law. Over time, popular pressure widened the ranks of those deemed eligible for jury service.
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Among the offenses now recommended by Leveson to be tried without a jury—and those most heavily reported by the media—are various sexual offenses, forms of racial and religious harassment and violence, drug and anti-social behavior offenses. Combined with the example of serious fraud cases, these will be used by Labour to make a populist pitch for this unprecedented attack on democratic rights.
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Britain has by far the highest incarceration rate in Western Europe, much higher rates of reoffending (29 percent of inmates within just one year of release) and longer average sentences, which have increased sharply in the last decade. This is the ruling class’s answer to the social consequences of growing inequality and poverty: effectively warehousing a section of the population treated as a criminal underclass.
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Rather than providing the funding to fix this—let alone resources for a genuinely rehabilitative justice system, or tackling the deprivation at the root of crime—Labour is trying to use a crisis of its own making to justify system of assembly-line “justice”.
18. Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa
Air traffic controllers strike for more staff and improved working conditions
Rail workers strike for pay, conditions, more investment in the rail system
Academic staff at Lincoln University, England walk out over redundancies
Civil service pension administration staff walk out over union recognition
Strikes by underground rail system workers in Glasgow, Scotland over working conditions
Further stoppages by teachers at UK school trust over plans to extend teaching day
Iran:
Continuing protests in Iran in face of repression by authorities
Lebanon:
Civil servants strike over low wages
University lecturers begin nationwide strike
Teachers’ unions in Abuja end three-month pay strike
Public sector workers at the Nkomazi Local Municipality continue pay strike
Daybreak Farm workers in Mpumalanga protest unpaid wages as firm goes into liquidation
19. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk
