Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Trump’s tariffs: a war against the working class
The imposition by the Trump administration of the highest US tariffs since the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Act of the 1930s is a declaration of war against the American and international working class.
Trump has claimed that “billions of dollars in tariffs are now flowing into the United States of America.” This is an outright lie—tariffs are internal, not money that flows in from abroad.
A central purpose is to pay for the major handouts to the ultra-wealthy and the corporations via the tax cuts in the budget bill.
But the implications go well beyond this immediate aim. History does not repeat itself, but there are lessons to be drawn from it. The imposition of tariffs in the 1930s played a major role in triggering and then deepening the Great Depression, which led ultimately to World War II. The same objective logic is lodged within Trump’s economic war against the world.
The tariff measures of the Trump regime are being carried out through two channels.
The blanket tariffs against countries—ranging from the lowest level of 10 percent up to 40 or even 50 percent—are being imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977, which Trump claims gives the president the authority to take such action because of the “national emergency” resulting from trade deficits.
This decision was ruled to be illegal by the Court of International Trade in May, but it is now being challenged on appeal by the Trump administration, first to a Federal court and possibly going to the Supreme Court, on the grounds that a reversal of tariffs would lead to a major financial crisis akin to the Great Depression.
In addition to the tariffs imposed under the IEEPA, there are tariffs on particular commodities, including steel, aluminum, autos, copper, computer chips, and, down the track, pharmaceuticals, on which Trump has threatened to impose a levy of 200 percent.
The objectives of the tariff war against the world have been outlined by Trump in statements and executive orders making clear that it is aimed at nothing less than the destruction of the post-war system, which, it is claimed, allowed the US to be “ripped off,” its industrial capacity weakened, and thereby its military capability undermined.
These orders have identified China as the central target, with continuous declarations from the administration, the Democrats, and the military-intelligence establishment that its economic and technological development is an existential threat that must be crushed at all costs.
*****
While China is the main target of the new world order, the US has not been able to enforce its dictates so easily. After it tried a full-frontal assault with the announcement of tariffs of 145 percent, China retaliated by imposing export controls on rare earth and rare earth magnets, of which it has a near-monopoly, and is critical for major sections of the auto and military industries.
These measures forced Trump to call a truce, now extended from the first week of August for another three months until November. The truce, however, is not the start of some resolution process, but it will be used by the US to gather the resources needed to be able to resume the full-scale attack.
*****
The Trump regime maintains that tariffs boost jobs—another lie, refuted by hard data. Steel tariffs introduced in 2018 are estimated to have increased the number of steel jobs by 1000. But the number of jobs lost in industries that use steel has been calculated at 75,000 because of the higher prices charged.
The issues before the US and international working class stand out in stark relief. The International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliate Socialist Equality Parties, call on workers to fight for an independent program against Trump’s economic and class war. The watchword must be “the main enemy is at home.”
2. In run-up to Trump-Putin talks, Russian offensive encircles Ukrainian units in Pokrovsk
Since US President Donald Trump announced on August 8 his plans for talks today with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska, Russian troops have mounted an offensive in Ukraine’s Donbas region.
While Russian troops have generally advanced very slowly in Ukraine, this time they advanced 15 kilometers starting around August 11. The offensive, reportedly spearheaded by infantrymen driving motorcycles to evade drone fire, reached the villages of Zolotiy Kolodyaz and Vesele. From there, it could cut off the main road along which supplies arrive to Ukrainian troops in cities they still hold in the Donbas, such as Pokrovsk and Kramatorsk.
Russian pincer movements are closing around both Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka. These cities, where tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops are reportedly trapped, are key nodes in the main Ukrainian fortified belt in the northern Donbas. The offensive threatens to smash through this belt, removing the last major obstacle to a Russian attack into Ukraine’s central plains—and major cities like Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia and the capital, Kiev.
This would put in question the survival of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s regime. The Ukrainian army, having suffered terrible losses in three years of war, would have to try to rebuild lines of defensive fortifications in the plains, where they would be even more exposed to drone, missile and artillery bombardment than in the comparatively uneven terrain of the Donbas.
This offensive exposes the disastrous consequences of the NATO powers’ stoking of a fratricidal war between two ex-Soviet republics, Ukraine and Russia. They backed a far-right coup in Kiev in 2014 to topple pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich, plunging Ukraine into civil war as Ukrainian-nationalist units like the Azov Battalion attacked Russian-speaking areas in eastern Ukraine. They then relentlessly armed the far-right Kiev regime against Russia.
After Putin’s reactionary decision to invade Ukraine in 2022, the NATO alliance, represented by then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, intervened to instruct Ukrainian officials to break off peace talks offered by the Kremlin. This set into motion a three-year war that has killed or wounded millions. Despite NATO support, Ukrainian forces ultimately found themselves outgunned by their Russian opponents.
*****The Kremlin’s current military successes do not in any way change the bankruptcy of its nationalist policy. A reactionary tool of the post-Soviet Russian capitalist oligarchy, it is organically oriented to deals with imperialism. Its calls to agree upon a new “security architecture” for Europe with its “Western partners”—annexing the largely Russian-speaking Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions of Ukraine, which it mostly already holds—have one visible and fatal flaw.
Such plans rely on finding someone to establish a government in the western Ukrainian rump state that will serve as a buffer between Russia and NATO. However, it is evident that the European Union (EU) and powerful factions of the American ruling class are determined to keep their hold over Ukraine and continue using the existing Ukrainian regime as a tool against Russia. The EU in particular views war with Russia not only as critical to its geopolitical objectives, but to justify an unpopular policy of rearmament financed by massive social cuts targeting workers.
The working class internationally is being brought face to face with the reactionary consequences of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It must come to grips with the fact that a horrific escalation of the bloodshed, including escalating military clashes between the world’s major nuclear powers, is posed as an imminent danger.
Whatever the outcome of today’s talks, there will be no lasting military-diplomatic resolution of the NATO-Russia war, which is inextricably bound up with imperialism’s plans for war against China’s rising economy, and for neo-colonial war across the Middle East. This war can only be ended, and the danger of a potentially civilization-ending global war averted, by building an international, socialist and anti-war movement of the working class.
3. UK Defense Secretary John Healey pledges troops on the ground in Ukraine
On the morning of the Alaska summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Britain’s Defense Secretary John Healey reiterated that the UK was ready to “put boots on the ground” in Ukraine to reinforce a ceasefire.
Healey was asked on BBC Breakfast if Britain’s role was to “watch and wait”. He replied, “No, the UK’s role is to stand with Ukraine on the battlefield and in the negotiations, and prepare, as we have been, leading 30 other nations, with military planning for a ceasefire and a secure peace through what we call the coalition of the willing.”
*****
Speaking of a group of roughly 30 mainly European countries, Healey added that more than 200 military planners from the Coalition of the Willing have been involved in “detailed planning for the point of a ceasefire,” meaning they were “ready to act from day one.”
“The military plans are complete,” he added. “We are ready to put UK boots on the ground in Ukraine in part to reassure Ukrainians. But also in part to secure the safe skies, safe seas and to build the strength of the Ukrainian forces, because in the end the best deterrence against Russia... re-launching their aggression against Ukraine is the strength of Ukraine to stand for itself.”
Aware of the gravity of what was being suggested, his interviewer asked what would happen if British troops were attacked by Russia. Healey insisted that British forces would have “the right to defend themselves if attacked”.
*****
The ambitions of the European powers still far outrun their capabilities, however. According to the Times this Wednesday, “British military chiefs have given up on the idea of a 30,000-strong contingent to protect Ukraine’s ports and cities.
“They are now said to be proposing a more ‘realistic mission’ involving air reassurance over western Ukraine, training support to the Ukrainian military and the clearance of mines from the Black Sea.”
According to the Times, “some European nations feared a deployment of tens of thousands of troops to protect important Ukrainian sites was too risky and were unwilling to provide sufficient numbers to deter President Putin from an attack, leaving others frustrated.”
These divisions were indicated in the Statement of the Co-chairs of the Coalition of the Willing released the same day, announcing in heavily caveated fashion that the group was “ready to play an active role, including through plans by those willing to deploy a reassurance force once hostilities have ceased.” [emphasis added]
4. Germany pledges additional military aid for Ukraine and spearheads European rearmament drive
Germany is participating in the new NATO military aid package for Ukraine and will contribute $500 million, as announced by the Ministry of Defense and the Federal Foreign Office in Berlin. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte praised the decision, declaring that the supplies would help Ukraine to continue to “defend” itself against the “Russian aggressor.”
Last month, US President Donald Trump made clear that while Washington was prepared to continue supplying weapons, the costs must be borne by the European allies. At the beginning of August, the Netherlands became the first NATO member to pledge funds for the newly created war chest.
The military package underscores that the European powers—and Germany above all—are determined to continue the NATO war against Russia even as US support becomes increasingly conditional. European politicians have also sharply criticized today’s planned meeting in Alaska between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisting that the hardline stance toward Moscow must be maintained.
*****
As in the 1930s, the militarization drive extends far beyond the arms sector. Civilian industries are being integrated into weapons production:
• Automotive: Volkswagen, faced with overcapacity and falling exports, is exploring partnerships with Rheinmetall to produce military technology. Continental and Bosch have transferred staff and facilities to Rheinmetall and Hensoldt.
• Factory conversions: Rheinmetall has repurposed civilian plants in Berlin and Neuss for military components. KNDS Germany has taken over a former Alstom rail plant in Görlitz to produce Leopard 2 tanks and Puma infantry fighting vehicles.
• Mechanical engineering & steel: Renk Group plans to exit its civilian industrial business entirely to focus on defense. Thyssenkrupp Marine Systems is ramping up submarine production. German steel producers are shifting into armored steel and similar products.
This is an unmistakable repetition of the economic transformation that accompanied the rise of German imperialism in the 1930s, when the same conglomerates enriched themselves by arming Hitler’s Wehrmacht.
*****
The German government’s insane march toward war is effectively backed by all capitalist parties. The demand to spend 5 percent of GDP on defence originated with the far-right AfD, but it is now embraced across the political spectrum. The Greens—once nominally pacifist—are among the most fervent militarists. The Left Party postures as a critic while voting for key war credits, including the €1 trillion package in the Bundesrat, and facilitating Merz’s election as chancellor.
This consensus mirrors the bourgeois unity before World War I and in the 1930s, when the ruling elite and its parties rallied first around the militarist and dictatorial agenda of Kaiser Wilhelm II and later Hitler and the Nazis to pursue a policy of imperial conquest and to brutally crush working class opposition at home.
*****
As [in the past,] the consequences of [Germany's] militarist offensive will be catastrophic. The build-up of Europe’s war machine is inseparable from an assault on wages, working conditions and democratic rights. As in the run-up to the two world wars, the ruling classes are responding to deep internal crises—social inequality, political instability, inter-imperialist rivalry—by preparing for war abroad, repression at home and the re-introduction of the draft to secure the necessary cannon fodder for its criminal imperialist wars of plunder. The genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza shows that they are once again prepared to slaughter hundreds of thousands and commit any crime.
5. More Trump thuggery as Border Patrol goons threaten Democrats in downtown Los Angeles
On Thursday, dozens of heavily armed Border Patrol agents in full tactical gear descended on the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district. Their mobilization coincided precisely with a nearby press conference by California Governor Gavin Newsom and other leading Democrats to promote a ballot initiative, the so-called “Election Rigging Response Act,” aimed at redrawing California’s congressional maps to the Democrats’ advantage ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The political purpose of the militarized deployment was unmistakable. Border Patrol officers, masked and carrying assault rifles, positioned themselves conspicuously near the event’s perimeter. Sector Chief Greg Bovino attempted to portray the mobilization as part of routine “roving patrols” across Los Angeles “for the past two months,” insisting any overlap with Newsom’s event was coincidental. “Breaking the law is breaking the law,” he said, dismissing questions about political motivations.
The scale of the operation, carried out in a dense urban center on the doorstep of a major political gathering, was part of the systematic use of military-police force by the Trump administration. It parallels the militarization of Washington D.C., where Trump has seized control of the local police and sent in federal agents and the National Guard under the same pretext of combating crime, creating what amounts to an occupation of the nation’s capital.
*****
The deployment in Los Angeles was not limited to the Border Patrol. Witnesses reported the active involvement of the Los Angeles Police Department alongside federal agents, underscoring the collaboration between local and federal forces in targeting immigrants.
This coordination makes a mockery of the “sanctuary city” and “sanctuary state” rhetoric long peddled by Democratic politicians in California. In reality, Los Angeles is the site of regular immigration raids targeting day laborers, street vendors and workers at retail outlets, car washes and hospitals, deemed “protected areas” until this year. As armed agents were setting up in Little Tokyo, an immigrant fleeing from an ICE operation at a Home Depot in Monrovia was killed on the 210 Freeway.
The political theater surrounding Newsom’s press conference was itself revealing. The Democratic governor was joined by Senator Alex Padilla, who was assaulted by federal agents during Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s press conference in June.
The state’s other Democratic senator, warmonger Adam Schiff, also stood alongside a lineup of union bureaucrats headed by Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Labor Federation, AFL-CIO. The Democrats and the union leaders presented themselves as defenders of democracy and workers’ rights against the Republican gerrymandering drive spearheaded by Texas and backed by Donald Trump.
These officials are not concerned about the democratic rights of immigrants or any other section of the working class. They have done nothing to halt the wave of immigration raids terrorizing working class communities across California or the US.
Newsom is pushing the redistricting initiative in California to protect the interests of the Democratic Party, which faces the loss of at least five seats in Congress through the Republican gerrymander in Texas. California is already even more gerrymandered than Texas, with a 43-9 Democratic delegation in the House of Representatives, compared to Texas, which currently has a 25-13 Republican delegation.
As for the California AFL-CIO, Gonzalez denounced “the billionaires” and “authoritarian tactics” of the GOP, while saying nothing about the bipartisan record of mass deportations, war, genocide and border militarization supported by both capitalist parties.
These union leaders, who preside over the suppression of strikes and the enforcement of concessionary contracts, now posture as champions of social justice. In reality they serve to chain the working class to the Democratic Party.
*****
While both parties practice gerrymandering, it is Trump and the Republicans who are spearheading the deployment of police and military forces within the United States. The Democrats, however, are concerned not about the threat to democratic rights but the threat to their own positions and the perks and privileges that accompany them. They view Trump’s methods as excessive and provocative, yet they share his core objective: preserving capitalist rule in the face of mounting popular opposition.
*****
What took place in Little Tokyo is a warning. The forces of state repression are being embedded into daily life. Their targets today are the most oppressed, but the machinery being constructed will be used against the whole working class. The only viable answer to the bipartisan conspiracy against democratic rights is the conscious intervention of the working class in political struggle, armed with a socialist program to put an end to the capitalist system that breeds dictatorship and war.
6. Africa and Asia face rising hunger as giant grain traders and food corporations rake in profits
While the world’s media bring terrible images of hungry Palestinians in Gaza to our screens—facing starvation due to Israel’s war of annihilation—rising levels of hunger in Africa and Asia go virtually unreported.
This year’s The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that between 673 million and 720 million people, (7.8 and 8.8 percent of the world population), experienced hunger in 2024.
There has been a significant increase in “most subregions of Africa and Western Asia [Middle East]”. In 2024 hunger affected about 307 million people in Africa and 39 million in Western Asia, 20.2 and 12.7 percent of the population, respectively.
Some of the worst affected countries in Africa are Sudan, where 24.6 million people (around half the population) are acutely food insecure and 637,000 (the highest anywhere in the world) face catastrophic levels of hunger; South Sudan, where around 60 percent of the population face hunger and food insecurity; Somalia (nearly 50 percent), Central African Republic (50 percent), Sierra Leone (40 percent), Nigeria (25 percent) and Ethiopia (25 percent).
In Western Asia, 80 percent of Yemen’s population faced hunger in 2024, Syria (60 percent), Iraq (25 percent), Lebanon (50 percent), and Jordan (14 percent), as well as Gaza.
*****
About 2.3 billion of the world’s population were moderately or severely food insecure in 2024. Globally and in every region food insecurity is more prevalent in rural areas where people work in agriculture and animal grazing, and affects more women than men.
*****
Nowhere in its 234-page report does the FAO explain the underlying economic processes that have put food out of reach for millions of people around the world. There is no mention of the Big Four—ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus (LDC), otherwise known as ABCD—the giant commodity trading corporations that operate across the entire middle of the food supply chain [which] extract massive multi-billion dollar profits by buying and selling grain on the international markets; storing and transporting commodities; food processing, selling seeds and fertilizers that are typically patent-protected and thus command high prices to farmers; and above all speculating via their active trade in derivatives, futures and hedging instruments on food prices.
7. New Zealand and Australian leaders discuss stronger military ties against China
Australia’s Labor Party Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met with New Zealand’s right-wing National Party Prime Minister Christopher Luxon on August 9 to discuss stronger military integration, as the two countries join US imperialism in its accelerating build-up to war against China.
The annual bilateral talks were held in the New Zealand tourist town of Queenstown a few days after the conclusion of Talisman Sabre, the largest war games ever hosted by Australia. The US-Australian exercise involved 40,000 troops from 19 countries—including more than 650 New Zealand personnel—and tested advanced long-range missile systems that play a major role in Washington’s war plans.
*****
Both countries hold annual Anzac Day commemorations, which glorify the “sacrifice” of tens of thousands of lives in WWI and other wars in the service of imperialism.
As the US seeks to establish its hegemony over the world’s resources, trade routes and labor markets, its imperialist allies—including Australia and New Zealand—are determined to have their seat at the table, regardless of the cost in human lives and resources.
*****
All these military preparations are being sold to the public as a “defensive” response to the supposed threat from China. Albanese and Luxon “expressed grave concern about dangerous and provocative behavior in the South China Sea and the intensification of destabilizing activities by coast guard and naval vessels as well as maritime militia. This behaviour has created risks of collision, miscalculation and injury.”
The two leaders “also expressed serious concern about the situation in the East China Sea” and “underscored the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
All of this is utterly hypocritical and a distortion of reality. It is the US which has deliberately inflamed tensions with China, including by arming the Philippines and Taiwan to the teeth and staging provocative military exercises near Chinese territory, in which NZ and Australia are frequently involved.
8. Australia: Police officers jailed over assault of mentally ill woman in Western Sydney
On August 8, two former New South Wales (NSW) police officers were jailed for the violent assault of a 48-year-old mentally ill woman in Western Sydney.
In what Judge Graham Turnbull described as an attack “clearly calculated… to inflict the maximum pain and discomfort,” the woman was kicked twice in the head, dragged along the road by her hair, punched and pepper-sprayed six times by the two “gym-hardened officers in their 20s.”
*****
Body-worn camera and CCTV footage of the assault was initially concealed from the public, after NSW Police argued it was so confronting that it should be suppressed for 60 years, to protect the woman from further trauma. Yet when she died last year—in what were described as “unconnected” circumstances—police continued to suppress the footage.
The extent of the police brutality was revealed last month, when reporters were allowed to view the video, after the Sydney Morning Herald and other news outlets petitioned the court. Following the sentencing, Judge Turnbull publicly released the CCTV footage and still images, but not the body camera video.
*****
The police officers were initially suspended without pay and resigned in August 2023 before they could be fired.
In sentencing the officers, who pleaded guilty, Judge Turnbull noted that “aside from [the woman] being naked, there was no criminal offense potentially available.” The cops, he continued, made “no attempt to engage” with her and unleashed their assault despite not being “at risk of any harm, let alone serious harm.”
*****
With mental health issues on the rise, police are increasingly acting as frontline responders. In 2022, the NSW Police Force recorded 61,164 incidents in connection to people experiencing a mental health emergency or incident where there was not an associated criminal offense. This is an increase from around 43,000 incidents in 2018.
The use of the police force to respond to those facing mental health crises is not an accident, but a deliberate bipartisan policy of successive Australian governments. There has been a long-term attack on funding for mental health services, while money and resources have been poured into the police forces.
The family of Antonio Gaston, the 53-year-old Stellantis worker who was crushed to death on the assembly line at the Jeep Toledo Assembly Complex last year, is suing the company for wrongful death.
The action, filed Monday in Lucas County Ohio Common Pleas Court, claims Stellantis removed safety guards on the conveyor where Gaston, a father of four, was working, causing him to be crushed to death between pinch points on the machine. The coroner said that Gaston died of multiple blunt force injuries and that his death was not instantaneous.
Renita Shores-Gaston, the widow of Antonio Gaston, said at a press conference Monday, “It was the hardest day of my entire life to hear that news, and then to have to call my children and tell them that their dad died at work. It’s been difficult not having him. I miss him so much, and I don’t want this to happen to another family.
*****
Chris Stewart, the family’s attorney, said, “Today’s lawsuit is not just for Mr. Gaston; it is for all of the workers out there to protect them from suffering what was a preventable tragedy that happened to him that day. This lawsuit was filed to get the truth about what truly happened to Mr. Gaston, because we do not believe we are getting the truth from Stellantis.”
*****
The UAW has taken no serious action to uncover the cause of the accident or to hold Stellantis accountable. The failure to investigate Gaston’s death has predictably led to other tragedies, such as the April 7 death of Dundee Engine skilled trades worker Ronald Adams Sr., age 63, who was crushed to death while repairing a machine in circumstances similar to the death of Gaston.
In June, the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) rejected a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the World Socialist Web Site for inspection records on the death of Antonio Gaston.
That request was filed in advance of a July 27 hearing investigating the death of autoworker Ronald Adams at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Plant. The investigation had been launched by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) to break through the stonewalling and cover-up of facts by Stellantis, the United Auto Workers and safety regulators.
*****
The relentless corporate assault on the working class that finds tragic expression in the series of work-related deaths and injuries can only be halted by the independent mobilization of rank-and-file workers independent of the two corporate controlled political parties, the Democratic and Republican, and the pro-management union apparatus. The IWA-RFC is spearheading this fight.
“This could have been prevented,” said steelworkers leaving their shift at US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works, describing the Monday morning explosion that killed two co-workers and injured 10 others.
Pointing to the World Socialist Web Site statement titled “The Clairton Coke Works disaster: Social murder in Pennsylvania,” one worker said, “I think that’s exactly right. We would report problems over and over again, and they just kept putting it off, putting it off, putting it off.” The WSWS is not publishing the names of workers to protect them from company retaliation.
Several workers spoke with WSWS reporters as they entered and left the mill, all confirming that the facility is aging and in disrepair, and that management routinely refuses to fix broken equipment or carries out repairs without taking proper safety precautions.
The worker said management’s response was always the same: they would promise to address problems “during a big project” or claim they would “take care of it” during an outage. “Well, they didn’t,” the worker said. “And this is what happens.”
*****
In the United States, there were 5,283 fatal work injuries recorded in 2023 and 5,486 in 2022. This amounts to a worker dying every 99 minutes from a work-related injury.
The union apparatus is doing nothing to stop the ongoing wave of safety violations that are killing workers.
The United Steelworkers (USW), whose members work at Clairton, issued only a perfunctory statement that they “will work with the appropriate authorities to ensure a thorough investigation and to see that our members get the support they need.”
In reality, the USW is complicit in the unsafe conditions, working to block any genuine struggle by steelworkers at the Clairton plant and across the country against the long-standing pattern of hazardous working conditions.
Just over two months ago, with much fanfare, President Trump announced the takeover of US Steel by Nippon Steel and the granting of a White House “golden share” in the company. This move is part of the administration’s broader reorganization of industrial production in preparation for war.
As the World Socialist Web Site explained in its August 13 statement, the United Steelworkers (USW) has not merely stood by as health and safety protections are dismantled, but has acted as a partner of corporate management, subordinating workers’ lives to the demands of profitability. The bureaucracy’s overriding concern is to protect its alliance with the steel industry and the Trump administration’s “national security” pact, which promises the union new revenue streams and positions in the councils of war.
11. California company receives probation and fine for two workers suffocated in 2020 nitrogen leak
California Ranch Foods, a Vernon-based food processing plant and subsidiary of Golden West Food Group, pleaded guilty last month to two misdemeanor counts over the workplace deaths of two employees, paying just over $6 million in a criminal plea agreement. The charges stem from a December 1, 2020 nitrogen leak in a chilled storage room that suffocated 56-year-old Baldemar Gonsales of Los Angeles and 54-year-old Maria Osyguss of Hemet.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, working from Cal/OSHA’s investigation, finalized the agreement in July. The deal reduces the charges from felony to misdemeanor, grants the company three years’ probation and allows it to continue operations uninterrupted.
In addition to a $1 million criminal fine, the company will donate $4 million to local food banks, pay $50,000 to Cal/OSHA, and spend $1.6 million on “enhanced safety measures.” These sums, which appear large on paper, amount to a minor operational expense for Golden West Food Group, whose annual revenue is estimated at $452 million, according to Buzzfile.
The company has since “retrofitted” its systems to comply with safety codes, in a frank admission that these measures could and should have been in place before two people lost their lives.
The government’s role in this tragedy cannot be understated. For years, the Cal/OSHA has been unable to conduct consistent, thorough inspections. A recent audit by the California State Auditor revealed that the agency is in a state of advanced decay. Staffing shortages, outdated procedures and an inspection rate far below the minimum needed to ensure worker safety are the result of a conscious political program.
The state administration of Democrat Gavin Newsom has starved Cal/OSHA of resources while relying on the trade union bureaucracy to smother worker opposition. This is the California expression of a nationwide policy, pursued under both Democrats and Republicans, to dismantle regulatory protections for the benefit of corporate profit.
At the federal level, Trump’s Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer announced in July the most sweeping deregulatory assault yet: eliminating ten regulations for every new one and slashing OSHA’s budget by nearly 8 percent. This means 223 fewer staff, 30 percent fewer inspections and a green light to corporate America to cut costs at the expense of workers’ lives.
The outcome will be both predictable and quantifiable: the cuts will drive fatalities beyond the more than 5,000 recorded workplace deaths each year in the United States—a figure that grossly understates the true toll once occupational diseases and long-term exposures are included.
The fight for workplace safety cannot be separated from the fight against the capitalist profit system. It is the logic of profit, not “incompetence” or “oversight,” that led California Ranch Foods to operate a death trap for years.
The memory of Baldemar Gonsales and Maria Osyguss must serve as a rallying cry. Workers everywhere must reject the official narrative that justice has been done. True justice will only come when the working class takes power into its own hands, reorganizing society on the basis of human need, not private profit.
12. Lula’s “Security Bill” strengthens police state in Brazil
This week, the Brazilian Congress began discussing a Proposed Amendment to the Constitution on Public Security drafted by the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of the Workers Party (PT). If approved by a two-thirds majority, it will bring about a significant concentration of police powers at the national level.
The bill provides for the integration and coordination of Civil and Military Police and Municipal Guards between the federal government, states and municipalities through the Unified Public Security System, expanding the federal government’s role in policy-making and combating organized crime. It also expands the powers of the Federal Police, Federal Highway Police and Municipal Guards, and elevates national security funding to constitutional status to guarantee specific resources.
Echoing the rhetoric of far-right politicians who advocate a policy of “zero tolerance” even for minor crimes, Lula declared in March: “We will not allow criminals to take over our country. We will not allow the ‘republic of cell phone thieves’ to start scaring people on the streets of this country.” He added: “That is why we are presenting a Security Constitutional Amendment so that we can say that the state is stronger than the criminals.”
*****
Despite its reactionary character, the bill’s progress has been marked by disputes between the federal government and politicians allied with Brazil’s fascist former president Jair Bolsonaro. The governor of the state of Goiás, Ronaldo Caiado (União Brasil), declared last November: “[The bill] is unacceptable, it is a usurpation of power, it is an invasion of a prerogative that is already guaranteed to us governors.”
The PT government responded to those criticisms of “usurpation of power” from the states by making significant concessions to the far right. In January, the government amended the proposal, maintaining the power of the states to legislate on “general rules of public security, social defense, and the prison system.” But these changes did not reduce the resistance of the fascistic political opposition.
*****
In São Paulo, police lethality increased by a staggering 61 percent between 2023 and 2024, from 504 to 813 deaths. Last year, the Military Police commanded by Governor Freitas, Bolsonaro’s former Minister of Infrastructure, was responsible for one of the bloodiest police operations in recent years in Brazil.
*****
The São Paulo Military Police, however, is not the deadliest in Brazil. According to the Yearbook, police killings in Bahia, a northeastern state governed by the PT since 2007, are almost double those in São Paulo, reaching 1,556 last year. According to a July report by Intercept, as a result of policies such as an infamous “Police Performance Award,” which rewards battalions for police performance and channels resources to special units with a history of high lethality, the “proportion of deaths caused by police officers has tripled since 2014, rising from 5 percent to more than 25 percent in 2023.”
What is happening in Bahia is the result of a long process of intensified repression overseen by federal and local PT governments. During his first terms in office (2003-2010), Lula waged a “war on drugs” that caused the prison population in Brazil to explode. It is now the third largest in the world. During the administration of PT President Dilma Rousseff (2011-2016), laws on criminal organizations and anti-terrorism were passed, both of which were used to indict political demonstrators and deploy the army to repress social protests.
*****
The PT’s growing alignment with a defense of police violence in terms previously restricted to open fascists is a manifestation of the shift to the right by the entire Brazilian capitalist establishment. This shift includes the pseudo-left satellites of the PT, whose main representative is the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL).
Covering every reactionary step of the PT government, the PSOL was tasked with fabricating arguments to present Lula’s Public Security bill as a progressive move. On the day of its approval by the congressional commission, state representative Talíria Petrone of the PSOL in Rio de Janeiro praised the PEC, stating that “Brazil needs standardized procedures, the use of body cameras, and limits on the use of force.” State representative Pastor Henrique Vieira, from the same party, defended the public ombudsman offices provided for in the proposal, demanding only more precision in the definition of “ombudsman” and “internal affairs.”
13. Air Canada demands government intervention against 10,000 flight attendants set to strike Saturday
Some 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants are set to strike early Saturday morning, in what would be the first national walkout by the airline’s cabin crew in fourteen years. A strike would disrupt operations at Canada’s largest airline which accounts for more than half of the industry’s passenger capacity, operating nearly 1,000 flights every day.
The immediate trigger is the breakdown of contract negotiations, following the expiry in March of a decade-long agreement signed in 2015. That deal, pushed through by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), locked workers into stagnating wages for ten years, while inflation steadily eroded their real incomes.
*****
There is immense anger among the flight attendants over the erosion of their real wages, under conditions where the airline has made bumper profits, apart from the worst years of the COVID-19 pandemic. 99.7% of flight attendants voted for strike action, with 94.6% of workers participating.
Air Canada offered what it claims is as a “generous” 38 percent compensation increase over four years, including a 25 percent bump in the first year, along with 50 percent pay for duties before takeoff and purported improvements to pensions and rest provisions. The real wage increase of this offer would, in reality, be closer to 17.2 percent and would leave the core issue of unpaid work unresolved.
The airline has responded with lockout threats and has begun canceling flights in phases ahead of a full shutdown, threatening to strand as many as 130,000 passengers a day.
On August 11, Air Canada demanded that the federal government intervene to impose binding arbitration to resolve all outstanding issues. CUPE rejected the plan. The next day, the company formally requested that the federal Liberal government invoke Section 107 of the Canada Labour Code to impose binding interest arbitration before any strike or lockout can take effect. In a public statement, Air Canada openly pointed to “proven precedent” in recent government interventions to halt or short-circuit strikes by Canada Post, rail, port, and airline workers—making clear it expects Ottawa to once again serve as a strikebreaker.
*****
The Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney is already positioning itself to intervene in defense of Air Canada’s profits. While Jobs Minister Patty Hajdu has so far limited herself to calling on “both sides” to reach a negotiated settlement, the big business Liberals’ record leaves no doubt that the government will act to prevent a strike that would disrupt the operations of one of Canada’s largest corporations. The invocation of Section 107 hangs over the dispute as a weapon to strip workers of their most fundamental democratic rights.
*****
The intolerable conditions facing Air Canada flight attendants are part of a broader deterioration in working conditions facing the entire working class. Across the country and internationally, governments and corporations are using inflation, corporate restructuring, and state-backed legal measures to drive down real wages, intensify workloads, and erode job security. Postal workers, rail workers, port workers, public service employees, and educators across Canada have all faced the same combination of intransigent employers, state intervention, and a union bureaucracy totally committed to defending Canadian capitalism by imposing the crisis on the backs of the workers they claim to represent.
The outcome of the flight attendants’ struggle will have far-reaching consequences. If Air Canada succeeds in using the government to impose arbitration, it will embolden other employers to do the same, further entrenching the precedent that the right to strike exists only at the pleasure of the state. This would be a major step toward the de facto outlawing of strikes in key sectors of the economy.
14. The work of theatre director Robert Wilson (1941-2025)
In the course of his career, Wilson clearly traveled a long way from his roots in Waco. One is left with the impression of a man, with an obviously restless spirit, who continually fought to overcome hurdles in his life in order to pursue his art, while not giving enough thought to the broader social and political implications of the journey he had undertaken. He was hardly alone in this regard! Capable of glittering, at times intense imagery, there is a lingering emptiness, a vagueness at the heart of Wilson’s work.
The persistent depiction, in his pieces, of mankind driven and manipulated by dark and inexplicable forces indicates in the final analysis...a fundamentally negative and confused attitude towards his social environment.
15. Wildfires hit France, Spain and entire Mediterranean rim of Europe
On August 10, southern France’s Aude prefecture announced that firefighters had brought the fire under control that had been devastating that department for almost a week. However, anger is rising across the south of France and throughout Europe, which has been hit by fires linked to global warming.
While European nations boost their military budgets by hundreds of billions of euros to wage war on Russia, public authorities refuse to allocate the necessary resources to fight fires, much less address the global climate crisis.
*****
Driven by these extreme conditions, wildfires are raging around the entire Mediterranean rim of Europe, hitting in particular the Iberian peninsula. In Spain in just a few days a hundred thousand hectares — mainly in Castilla y León and Galicia — have burned. Two firefighter volunteers have died. At least 11 major roads have been affected, and train service between Madrid and Galicia has been suspended.
*****
These fires sweeping southern Europe are not merely local issues that can be solved nationally; they stem from the capitalist nation-state system’s failure to confront the global climate crisis. This crisis is undeniably the catalyst behind the international wave of fires and heatwaves engulfing Europe.
*****
This disaster is not inevitable, but it is the outcome toward which the world’s capitalist powers are hurtling. Driven by their reactionary national interests, they cannot carry out the economic coordination and planning necessary for a global reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Having squandered hundreds of billions of euros on their war with Russia in Ukraine, NATO countries are now imposing massive austerity, taking workers’ money to militarize society, not solve the climate crisis.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) is conducting an online vote of postal workers between August 6 and 26 on “Rebuilding Royal Mail Parts 1 and 2”. These are the packages drawn up between CWU leaders Dave Ward and Martin Walsh and billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group—now sole owners of Royal Mail.
The terms under which the ballot has been organized are a fraud from start to finish.
*****
Far from “rebuilding Royal Mail,” the CWU-Kretinsky deal is aimed at dismantling the mail service through “USO reform” as set out in Point 5.7 of the agreement. It is already being implemented via the “Optimized Delivery Model” (ODM) co-authored and piloted by the CWU. The only thing being optimised is profit: £425 million in annual structural cost-cutting is targeted for EP Group’s coffers, paid for through mass job losses and gutting of the mail service.
*****
The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) calls for an emphatic No vote in the ballot. Ward, Walsh, and the entire postal executive have forfeited any right to speak for workers—they are a mouthpiece for the company.
But a No vote is not enough. A fight must be organized to remove the unaccountable pro-company bureaucracy and restore power to the shop floor. Rank-and-file committees based on the will of the majority and led by trusted militants must be built at every workplace to fight for workers’ interests.
The PWRFC puts forward the following demands:
An inflation-busting, no-strings pay rise
Enough of below-inflation settlements and productivity. We demand a real pay increase that restores what has been stolen through years of wage suppression.Abolish the two-tier workforce—equal pay and conditions for all
No more divide and rule. New entrants must not be condemned to poverty pay, unpaid breaks gig economy flexibilityDefend the Universal Service Obligation
The USO must be protected as a vital public good—not dismantled for private profit.Workers’ control of technology to shorten hours and improve safety
Automation and digital tools must serve workers, not billionaire shareholders. Use technology to reduce workloads, improve health and safety, not to destroy jobs.There is no shortage of anger toward the CWU bureaucracy, but real power lies in a collective struggle by Royal Mail’s 130,000 postal workers. This needs to be organized on a perspective that challenges the dictates of the corporate billionaires, to defend postal workers and the mail service.
17. United States: IAM bureaucracy appeals to fascist Senator Hawley to intervene in Boeing strike
The International Association of Machinists (IAM) bureaucracy has appealed for an intervention by extreme-right politicians in the strike of 3,200 Boeing machinists in St. Louis and St. Charles, Missouri, and Mascoutah, Illinois. Workers are currently in the second week of their strike and are demanding an inflation- and tariff-busting wage increase, a reduction in healthcare premiums, the elimination of the two-tier wage system and the restoration of the defined benefit pension plan.
The appeal took the form of letters written to the Missouri Congressional Delegation, dated August 11 and released to the media Wednesday. In them, IAM International President Brian Bryant called on lawmakers to “urge the Boeing Company to return to the bargaining table” and produce a “good faith agreement.”
*****
The letters can only be understood as preparation for a sellout. During last year’s strike of 33,000 Boeing machinists in Washington, Oregon and California, the so-called mediation provided by the Biden administration, through then-Acting Labor Secretary Julie Su and National Economic Adviser Lael Brainard, produced a deal that explicitly fell short of workers’ wage demands.
*****
The supposedly “historic agreement” also left out the restoration of company-paid pensions, which had been stolen from workers in a conspiracy between Boeing and the IAM bureaucracy which forced through the 2014 contract extensions.
Now, the IAM bureaucracy itself is calling for such mediation. Contrary to the illusions promoted by the apparatus and the media, the government is not a neutral arbiter of labor disputes but the chief defender of the capitalist economic order and the private ownership of the means of production.
*****
Workers must be on guard against this open treachery by the [IAM union] bureaucracy. An appeal to the capitalist political establishment, especially under conditions in which the extreme right dominates American politics, only demobilizes workers and leaves them unprepared for attacks from the state.
Boeing machinists should set up rank-and-file committees to mobilize other sections of workers behind them, their real allies in this fight, and prepare for a break with the IAM apparatus and political struggle against both big business parties.
18. Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, and Middle East
Africa
Kenya:
Nurses in Migori County continue strike over pay and promotion
Nigeria:
Workers in Taraba State begin indefinite strike over use of biometric verification
South Africa:
Big5 Cookware workers in Free State, South Africa walk out over union recognition
Kalahari AutoForce drivers in Eastern Cape walk out over pay and conditions
Municipal workers in Marabastad march over pay and to demand reinstatement of sacked workers
Europe
Portugal:
Health professionals in the Algarve strike over staff shortages and health funding
Airport workers continue strikes over pay and conditions
Turkey:
Public sector workers at university in Ankara walk out to demand better pay and conditions
United Kingdom:
Leisure center workers in Northern Ireland capital hold 24-hour walkout over pay
Civil service pension administration staff to extend strike over union recognition
Staff at two universities to walk out this week over job losses
Middle East
Iran:
Ongoing protests by workers over living conditions
19. Demand the freedom of Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The International Committee of the Fourth International and the World Socialist Web Site have initiated a global campaign to demand the immediate release of Bogdan Syrotiuk. The fight for Bogdan’s freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
