Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
In 1907, the great socialist author Jack London wrote a novel titled The Iron Heel, which depicted the creation of a ruthless dictatorship by a capitalist oligarchy determined to crush the working class. London wrote:
It was the Iron Heel indeed. The soldiers of the mercenaries patrolled the streets, their bayonets gleaming in the sun. The slightest sign of resistance was met with swift and terrible retribution. The people were cowed, beaten, and terrorized into submission.
Nearly 120 years later, the working class and youth throughout the United States are confronting the growing specter of an Iron Boot.
The Trump administration is relentlessly escalating its drive to establish a presidential dictatorship. To deny this after the past two weeks, during which Trump has taken actions that are without precedent in US history, is blindness, self-deception or outright collaboration. The president has turned Washington D.C. into a police-military garrison and is extending this template nationwide.
On Monday, Trump issued an executive order titled “Additional Measures to Address the Crime Emergency in the District of Columbia,” building on his August 11 declaration of a fraudulent “crime emergency” and taking new steps toward dictatorship. It authorizes an online portal to recruit ex-police, ex-soldiers and vigilantes for deployment in Washington and “other cities where public safety and order has been lost.” In plain language, Trump is creating a paramilitary force operating outside traditional structures, at his personal command, with license to use lethal force.
The order also instructs the Secretary of Defense to “immediately create and begin training, manning, hiring, and equipping a specialized unit within the District of Columbia National Guard” and to ensure that every state’s National Guard is “resourced, trained, organized, and available” for rapid nationwide mobilization. In practice, this establishes a standing military-police force at the president’s disposal, ready to be unleashed against protests, strikes and political opposition anywhere in the country.
The nominal reasons given for these actions—that the cities are overrun by crime, which follow the claims of an “invasion” by the United States of immigrants—are obvious lies. Nor can these actions simply be attributed to Trump’s egocentric narcissism or longstanding admiration of Hitler. Trump is acting on behalf of a financial oligarchy, which is breaking with constitutional forms of rule.
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Trump’s program speaks for a ruling class determined to reverse the entire course of modern American history, tearing up every social advance won through struggle since the Civil War. It is not coincidental that Trump is attempting to revive the glorification of Confederate heroes.
Federal workers are being purged by the tens of thousands. Public education and public health face unprecedented cuts. Whatever remains of the New Deal and Great Society reforms are to be dismantled. The aim is nothing less than the liquidation of all the limited concessions wrested from the capitalist class in the 20th century.
The government is preparing in advance for the inevitable eruption of mass opposition to these attacks. The ruling class is convinced that the destruction of jobs, pensions, healthcare and basic living standards will provoke uprisings, particularly in the cities. For years, the state has been preoccupied with the danger of urban unrest, and Trump’s executive orders are designed to ensure that such resistance is met with military force and suppression.
This basic class dynamic also explains the role of the Democratic Party. While there may be disagreements over Trump’s methods, both big business parties accept that drastic changes in social policy must be imposed at the expense of the working class. The differences are tactical. On the central question—who will pay for the deepening crisis of American capitalism—there is no disagreement.
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This reality underscores the decisive role of the working class in the unfolding political crisis. Workers who imagine that Trump’s violent attacks on immigrants or his fraudulent crusade against “crime” have nothing to do with them are gravely mistaken. The imposition of authoritarian rule will extend into every aspect of social life.
The working class—its jobs, living standards, social benefits and democratic rights—is the principal target of the ruling class drive for austerity, imperialist war and dictatorship. Strikes will be outlawed, and any form of resistance to the dictates of the oligarchy will be criminalized.
The most urgent task confronting workers, youth and all progressive sections of society is to confront political reality and develop a strategy to defend democratic rights. As the WSWS wrote on August 20:
In the absence of opposition from within the existing political structure, the center of resistance to Trump must move to the working class. The basic political questions that must be answered are: What must be done by the working class, with the support of students and all progressive forces within society, to stop the establishment of a dictatorship in the United States? What are the new forms of organized mass action, including a general strike, required to defend the democratic rights of the working class? What changes in the economic and social structure of the country are necessary to break the power of the financial-corporate oligarchy?
In confronting the rebellion of the Slavocracy in 1861, Lincoln was driven to the conclusion that the democratic principles proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence could be preserved only through a revolution that destroyed the economic base of the Confederacy, slavery. Exactly 160 years after the conclusion of the Civil War, the threat of a fascistic military-police dictatorship poses the necessity of ending the economic base of oligarchic power, capitalism, and its replacement with workers’ power and soci
2. ICE arrests at Southern California schools terrorize students and parents at start of school year
The new school year in Southern California has begun under extraordinary and deeply ominous circumstances. Within days of students returning to classrooms, federal immigration agents have carried out aggressive operations at and near public schools, targeting students and their families. At least ten documented cases near Los Angeles and San Diego schools have taken place since classes resumed.
The raids in Southern California are only one front in a nationwide campaign, building on last year’s arrests of dozens of arrests of students, parents and teachers in schools across the country.
Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, explained to NBC News that enforcement around K‑12 schools is part of an ongoing federal campaign, justifying future intrusion on school grounds whenever “special circumstances” or “exigent situations” arise. He also noted that, while ICE agents won’t be seen on school campuses on the first day of schools in Washington DC Monday, they may be in the near future.
The terror being inflicted on immigrant families is part of an even broader repression. Trump has deployed the National Guard to Washington DC, with plans for further deployments to other states, and is conducting surveillance on tens of millions of visa holders. The targeting of immigrants functions as a pretext for the methods of dictatorship that are now being deployed against workers everywhere.
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The scale of ICE activity in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) is unprecedented.
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At least four separate arrests have taken place outside San Diego county schools over the past three weeks.
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Democrats throughout the Southern California and the state continue to promote the illusion that “sanctuary city” laws will protect families from Trump’s ICE Gestapo. But throughout California and the nation, these laws, always limited in scope, have been rendered meaningless, as police join federal immigration agents in terrorizing immigrant communities. The start of the new school year in the Los Angeles Unified LAUSD makes this betrayal painfully clear.
The teachers’ unions, including United Teachers Los Angeles, the San Diego Education Association and the Chicago Teachers Association, have gone to great lengths to channel the anger of educators into symbolic protests and appeals to superintendents. Teachers have rallied to demand the release of detained students, but only by urging district officials to intervene, never calling for united and militant action by all educators.
Even as nearly 80,000 California teachers languish under expired contracts and the CTA trumpets its “We Can’t Wait” campaign, the unions refuse to call for strike action or collective resistance to ICE raids. Instead, they stage rallies and publicity stunts, pressuring superintendents for better safety policies while avoiding any confrontation with the capitalist state.
This refusal is not an accident. The unions and the Democratic Party are bound by a common political function: to suppress the working class and prevent any struggle that would reveal the inseparable link between deportations and police repression and the capitalist system itself. Their role is to serve the interests of the ruling class and defend the regime of austerity and state violence. They cannot be reformed, pushed to the left, or compelled to fight. As history and present experience demonstrate, any movement that places its hopes in these organizations will only face deeper attacks and more brutal repression.
3. Contract expires for over 60,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers at the end of September
Healthcare workers confront not only Kaiser Permanente, but a treacherous union bureaucracy enmeshed with management through corporatist schemes like the “Labor Management Partnership.”
4. The gerrymandering wars and the breakdown of American democracy
On August 23, the Texas Senate passed a sweeping mid-decade congressional map designed to cement Republican dominance and entrench the political power of Donald Trump and his far-right allies. The bill, previously passed by the Texas House on August 20 and expected to be signed any day by Republican Governor Greg Abbott, could add as many as five GOP-leaning districts to Texas’s US House delegation, strengthening Republican efforts to maintain control in the 2026 midterm elections.
Trump instructed the Texas Republicans, led by fascistic Governor Abbott, to carry out the gerrymandering. Implemented five years before the next scheduled census-based map, it is the latest salvo in an escalating electoral war between the two parties of big business. California Democrats have advanced their own plan to redraw congressional districts to create five new Democratic-leaning seats, setting up a nationwide tit-for-tat battle that threatens to engulf the electoral system in chaos.
What takes the form of a political dispute over district lines and midterm strategies is a sign of the deep and accelerating breakdown of the traditional mechanisms of bourgeois democracy in the United States. The terrific contradictions of American capitalism, particularly the unprecedented levels of social inequality, are incompatible with democratic forms of rule. The political superstructure is realigning itself with the underlying social relations.
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California Governor Gavin Newsom has been leading a counterattack to Republican gerrymandering. On August 21, the California legislature approved Proposition 50, officially suspending California’s independent redistricting commission—created by voters in 2010—and replacing its map with one drawn by lawmakers to flip five GOP-held seats.
If voters approve the measure in a special election on November 4, 2025, the new map will govern the 2026, 2028 and 2030 elections, after which the commission’s authority would resume.
Newsom framed the plan as a necessary response to Republican attacks, declaring, “We tried to hold hands… We can’t just think differently, we have to act differently.”
In other words, Newsom initially signaled his willingness to partner with the Republicans when it comes to consolidating ruling class power. In reality, Democrats are mirroring the GOP’s methods, discarding the state’s independent redistricting process—established to prevent partisan manipulation—in order to secure their own power.
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Despite polls showing nearly two-thirds of Californians oppose bypassing the commission, Democratic leaders remain determined to override public sentiment. As in Texas, both parties are using the state apparatus to entrench corporate and political dominance. Both parties maintain ballot-access laws that systematically block socialist, independent, and third-party candidates, ensuring that the financial elite dominates the entire political system.
The gerrymandering battles in Texas and California are triggering a nationwide wave of similar maneuvers. States, including Illinois, New York, Indiana, Missouri and South Carolina, are already signaling plans to redraw maps before 2030. In the coming months, dozens of lawsuits are expected: Republicans suing Democrats in California, Democrats suing Republicans in Texas, and both parties maneuvering for advantage elsewhere.
The collapse of democratic norms and Trump’s escalating coup underscore a fundamental reality: democratic rights cannot be defended through either of the two corporate-controlled parties or on the basis of the capitalist system which they uphold.
5. With the Lisa Cook sacking Trump steps up drive to take over Federal Reserve
US President Trump has taken an unprecedented step in his campaign to bring the US Federal Reserve under his control and subordinate it to the policies of his administration with his decision late Monday evening to sack Fed governor Lisa Cook “effective immediately.”
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In the words of the Financial Times: “Trump’s late-night putsch represents one of the gravest challenges to the Fed since it became independent 74 years ago, and marks a stunning escalation in the president’s attack on the US economic establishment.”
The ousting of Cook comes in the wake of Trump’s sacking of the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erika McEntarfer, at the beginning of the month, following claims by Trump that data showing a significant weakening of the labor market had been “rigged.”
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The interest rate-setting body of the Fed is the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). It comprises seven members appointed by the president for a fixed term and 12 others nominated by the regional Fed banks. Only five of the 12 get to vote at any one time on a rotational basis.
The board of governors is where the power lies, and Trump is working to place his supporters in control. Following the resignation of Adriana Kugler earlier this month, Trump announced that one of the key architects of his economic agenda, Stephen Miran, the chair of his Council of Economic Advisers, would temporarily fill the vacancy, pending Senate confirmation.
He already has the support of two governors, Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, both of whom are in the running to replace Powell when his term ends next May. Bowman and Waller were appointed by Trump in his first term and at the July meeting of the Fed registered their dissent from the decision to keep interest rates on hold, the first time there have been two dissents by governors since 1993.
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Anyone naïve enough to believe the reason for the sacking of Cook has anything to do with her alleged improprieties in seeking a loan need only look at the case of Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was appointed by Trump as US ambassador to France, a top diplomatic post.
Kushner is a convicted felon and a disbarred attorney, and has been involved in tax evasion, making illegal campaign contributions and witness tampering.
The Trump war on the Powell-led Fed and its independence from direct political control has exposed significant divisions and conflicts within the financial elite. Trump’s opponents fear that, together with the tariff war against the rest of the world and the worsening debt position of the US, the scrapping of Fed independence will undermine the global position of the US and weaken the dollar.
6. With Finance Minister's Ukraine visit, Germany escalates war with Russia and austerity at home
With the visit of German Finance Minister, Social Democrat (SPD) leader and Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil to Kiev earlier this week, the German government has finally moved to the forefront of the imperialist war offensive in Eastern Europe. Klingbeil promised President Volodymyr Zelensky annual military aid of at least €9 billion and reaffirmed Germany’s willingness to provide “security guarantees” for Ukraine.
These commitments follow directly on from the Ukraine summit in Alaska, where US President Donald Trump made it clear that Washington will concentrate its forces on the conflict with China and that the European powers should bear the brunt of the war against Russia. Berlin is determined to take on this role—not in the interests of “peace and security,” as Klingbeil claims, but to enforce its own imperialist interests.
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Parallel to his visit, Klingbeil is preparing the adoption of a war budget. He envisions a tripling of military spending within the next few years. By 2029, the defense budget is set to rise from €52 billion to €153 billion. Together with other items for “war-ready infrastructure,” around 27 percent of the federal budget will then flow directly into militarism.
The rearmament is being financed by massive new borrowing: Klingbeil is already taking out €143 billion in new loans this year, and by 2029 this figure is expected to rise to €185 billion annually. In total, the new debt will amount to €850 billion. This is only possible thanks to the amendment to the Basic Law passed in March, which exempts defense spending from the debt brake and allows the government to take on an additional €1 trillion in debt.
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All the facts underscore that Germany and Europe are transitioning to a war economy. A recent analysis by the Financial Times based on satellite data shows that the arms industry has expanded its capacity three times faster than in peacetime since 2022. Over seven million square meters of new halls, factories and infrastructure have been built.
Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest arms manufacturer, plans to increase its production of artillery shells from 70,000 (2022) to 1.1 million per year by 2027. In Hungary, a huge armaments park for Leopard 2 ammunition and explosives is being built. In Germany, the MBDA factory in Schrobenhausen is being expanded to mass-produce Patriot missiles and Enforcer systems in the future.
At the same time, civilian industry is being integrated into war production: VW, Bosch, Continental, Thyssenkrupp and other corporations are providing factories, personnel and materials. This repeats, under changed historical conditions, the transition to a total war economy in the 1930s.
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At the same time, the US is preparing its offensive against China. Trump is working on a possible Ukraine deal with Russia over the heads of the European powers, while at the same time demanding that they take on more responsibility in Ukraine. Germany and the other European powers fear the developing foreign policy rift with the US. At the same time, Berlin in particular is responding to the collapse of the postwar order by once again asserting itself as the dominant military power on the continent.
The insane course toward a Third World War is not a “defense of democracy,” but an expression of the insoluble contradictions of capitalism: between the global economy and the nation-state, and between social production and private appropriation.
But the same contradictions that produce war also create the objective basis for a socialist revolution. Resistance is growing worldwide: In the US, over 15 million people demonstrated against Trump on June 14—the largest protests in the country’s history. In Europe, the Middle East and around the world, massive resistance to war, militarism and social attacks is also developing.
The refusal to date of top national and state elected Democrats to endorse the party’s candidate in the country’s largest city, more than two months after the primary, is extraordinary. It is an expression of a deep crisis pervading the Democratic Party.
8. GE Aerospace workers in Ohio and Kentucky face midnight strike deadline
Coming on top of the current month-long strike by 3,200 workers at Boeing jet fighter plants in Missouri and Illinois, a strike by GE Aerospace workers would substantially impact the US war machine.
9. Germany: Volkswagen: Opposition to layoffs and cuts is growing
Opposition among Volkswagen employees against the sweeping cuts to jobs and wages worked out with the help of the IG Metall union is growing. Union officials are warning: “The mood is turning.”
10. France’s Bayrou government set to fall in September vote, as strikes against austerity loom
At his August 25 press conference, Prime Minister François Bayrou said he will demand a vote of confidence at the National Assembly on September 8 on his austerity budget. Under the terms of Article 49.1 of the French constitution, Bayrou must resign and his government will collapse if he loses such a confidence vote.
Bayrou’s program of €44 billion in austerity measures targeting pensions, healthcare, education and unemployment insurance is deeply unpopular. Moreover, Bayrou has tried to justify his social cuts, apart from citing the need to repay France’s creditors in the banks, by calling for the massive diversion of resources to the military to prepare for high-intensity warfare. The French people reject this policy, and polls have found 84 percent opposed to Bayrou’s program.
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The collapse of the framework Macron and Bayrou developed to justify the basic policies of French imperialism does not mean, however, that these essential policies are changing. With France facing a debilitating sovereign debt of over 114 percent of its GDP and desperate to militarily secure its access to markets and raw materials amid mounting global war, the bourgeoisie intends to double down on austerity, militarism and police-state repression.
Bayrou’s resignation will not end the political confrontation between the capitalist oligarchy and the working class. It is in this context that one can understand the political content not only the ruling elite’s rapid swing away from Bayrou but also the growing calls from both Mélenchon’s LFI and the neo-fascist RN for the removal of Macron.
11. Plant explosion in Roseland, Louisiana threatens local air and water quality
Despite efforts in using water containment booms to halt the spillage of oil, residents some 30 miles south of the Tangipahoa River, which runs alongside the explosion site, have reported seeing oil on the surface of the river.
The chauvinist, pro-Quebec independence Parti Québécois (PQ) won the provincial by-election in the predominantly rural riding of Arthabaska-L'Erable earlier this month, confirming its status as the province’s “government in waiting,” although it currently is just the fourth party in the National Assembly.
The PQ candidate, Alex Boissonneault, a former Radio-Canada host and self-avowed right-winger, won 46.3% of the vote in what was considered a stronghold of the ruling Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ).
With a meager 7.2 percent of the vote, a drop of 44 percentage points compared to the last election in 2022, the CAQ suffered a debacle, finishing fourth in the race.
The leader of the Conservative Party of Quebec, far-right libertarian Éric Duhaime, finished second with 35.1 percent of the votes cast. The supposedly “left-wing” Québec Solidaire (QS) finished last among the “major” parties, with a meager 1.5 percent of the vote, a huge drop from 2022 when its same candidate captured 9.2 percent of the vote.
The by-election results reflect deep popular dissatisfaction with the CAQ and Premier François Legault. His right-wing, “Quebec First” government, in power since 2018, has intensified the austerity measures of its PQ and Liberal predecessors.
Its massive budget cuts have left public services on the brink of collapse, as evidenced by high rates of burnout among workers, chronic shortages of teachers and nurses, and the dilapidated state of vital infrastructure such as schools and hospitals.
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Certain sections of the ruling class, historically associated with the most unbridled Quebec nationalism, are now pushing for the return of the PQ to power to carry out this reactionary mission
It is primarily their efforts that are behind the PQ’s rise in the polls—not a renewed interest among workers in this party of big business, and champion of Quebec separatism and chauvinism.
But reviving the PQ, a party that was virtually wiped off the map only a few years ago and is widely hated among the working class for its anti-worker and anti-immigrant policies, is a complicated political operation.
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As part of its relentless efforts to stifle the class struggle and revive the Parti Québécois, the union bureaucracy is redoubling its efforts to spread the poison of Quebec nationalism, which serves to divide Quebec workers from their class brothers and sisters in the rest of Canada. In this it has the support of Québec Solidaire, a party of affluent sections of the middle class that supports the reactionary nationalist project of Quebec independence and seeks to win the patronage of the union bureaucracy by defending all its betrayals.
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Workers in Quebec must beware. The ruling class is taking advantage of the suppression of class struggle by the unions, aided by QS, to cultivate the far right and revive discredited capitalist parties like the PQ and the Parti Libéral du Québec (PLQ).
13. Reform UK leader Farage unveils mass migrant deportations plan
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage pledged Tuesday to deport hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers and migrants—up to 600,000 in a first five-year Parliament—if his party wins the next general election.
Unveiling his fascistic “Operation Restoring Justice”, Farage said the plans would be carried out under an “Illegal Migration (Mass Deportations) Bill.”
Having had his plan trialed on the front page of the Times Saturday, which also ran a fawning interview, Farage’s policy was laid out in spreads in several newspapers Tuesday, including the Telegraph which also provided him with an op-Ed.
Farage’s program requires an unprecedented assault on democratic rights. He explained that to enforce his plan required taking Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), repealing the Human Rights Act and disapplying for five years three other international treaties—the 1951 Refugee Convention, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention—which he denounced as “roadblocks”.
Anyone arriving in a small boat to the UK would not be recognized or afforded any protections as an asylum seeker but would be treated as a criminal and placed under arrest. Arrest would be followed by automatic detention and forced deportation, with no right of appeal, to countries such as Afghanistan and Eritrea.
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The Reform UK leader’s warning[s] about a breakdown in public order in fact identify the consequences of his own agitation. His party has led the way, in alliance with outright fascist thugs, in organizing anti-asylum seeker mobilizations over the past year, including the weeks-long siege this summer of the Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex.
Farage is emboldened to proclaim his fascistic program because it now has broad support in the ruling elite. A fascist constituency is being created and mobilized not just to round up and deport migrants, but to be used against the working class under conditions in which living standards and democratic rights must be eviscerated by a ruling class set on intensifying its war and austerity agenda.
14. United Kingdom: Festival censorship of Mary Wallopers over Gaza protest backfires
Censorship of Irish folk-punk band The Mary Wallopers by Portsmouth’s Victorious Festival for displaying a Palestinian flag has backfired. As the festival’s false claims and denials about the censorship unraveled, some bands pulled out of the festival. Many more expressed their solidarity, protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The Mary Wallopers took to the stage at Victorious on August 22 with a Palestinian flag, as they have done for the last six years. Midway through their opening song, as they led chants of “Free Palestine,” festival staff cut the band’s sound and tore down the flag. The crowd booed, chanting “Let them play.”
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Two days later, [the Irish rap trio] Kneecap faced down ferocious attempts by pro-Israel agitators to silence them at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris. Against a backdrop of whistles and pro-Israel flags meant to disrupt the show, Kneecap took the stage calmly. When they quipped, “We’re not here to cause fights… it’s all love, all support for Palestine,” security removed the troublemakers.
The rest of the concert went off without a hitch, with the crowd chanting “Free, free Palestine.” Kneecap again made clear where they stood. Their performance, cheered by thousands, directly contradicted the idea that singing against genocide was a threat to public order. Rock en Seine’s owner Matthieu Pigasse told critics: “To claim that supporting the Palestinian cause is a threat to public order is deplorable.”
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The stand taken by bands and audiences is part of a worldwide upsurge of opposition to the Israeli assault on Gaza, especially among young people and cultural workers. In Gaza itself, the devastation is horrendous. Over 62,000 people, more than half of them women and children, have been slaughtered by the Israeli military in one of the worst crimes against humanity in history.The stand taken by bands and audiences is part of a worldwide upsurge of opposition to the Israeli assault on Gaza, especially among young people and cultural workers. In Gaza itself, the devastation is horrendous. Over 62,000 people, more than half of them women and children, have been slaughtered by the Israeli military in one of the worst crimes against humanity in history.
This massive humanitarian crisis has galvanized protests and solidarity actions across the globe. Tens of thousands have marched under the slogan “Free Palestine,” and countless artists and intellectuals have signed open letters decrying the war and boycotting institutions seen as complicit.
alism.
15. Australian higher education providers exploit childcare staffing crisis
Numerous Australian universities, including Southern Cross University (SCU), based in northern New South Wales with branches in most states, are offering students a Graduate Diploma in Early Childhood Education that can be completed in less than a year.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) obtained documents and information from former and current SCU employees that illustrate how the federal Labor government’s policies are pushing universities into short-cut vocational courses, using students as cash cows.
Other public universities offering a one-year (in effect 10-month) graduate diploma include Melbourne’s Victoria University, Central Queensland University, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Edith Cowan University, Griffith University and University of Southern Queensland.
Private operators are also cashing in on intensifying staffing shortages in childcare centers. The ABC reported that nine new graduate diplomas in early childhood education have been approved by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) in the past year, with six being offered through private providers.
All these courses have received accreditation from the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA).
All offer one-year programs studying online and requiring students to do 60 days (12 weeks) practicum placements. A one-year course essentially equates to approximately 24 weeks of classes. The fees for students range from $4,650 for domestic students to $37,440 for international students.
The ABC reported significant concerns among SCU staff that student numbers in the graduate diploma had jumped from 200 to over 2,000, leading to a significant reduction in the quality of education.
While recent media headlines, and police and government reactions, have been concentrated on allegations of sexual abuse, the staffing crisis in childcare is long standing and points to deep systematic problems.
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The childcare staffing crisis and the response by universities and other training operators have the same root cause, the capitalist profit system, which demands that even the most fundamental right to education, from early childhood to tertiary education, be turned to a source of profit.
In Australia, as elsewhere, successive governments, whether Labor or Liberal-National, have gutted public funding for education and training. At the same time, they have actively encouraged a rapid expansion of the private training sector and forced the chronically-underfunded public universities to become ever more dependent on international student fees.
Childcare should not be a luxury or a business opportunity. Nor should the education of childcare workers. The provision of high-quality education and training for all students should be a basic social right. And childcare education, like all education, should be in the hands of well-qualified teachers and support staff.
16. Australian government provocatively accuses Iran of antisemitic attacks
At a press conference yesterday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated that Iran was responsible for two antisemitic attacks in Australia last year. The bald declaration, which was not substantiated with a shred of evidence, had the character of a diplomatic and geopolitical provocation against Iran, coordinated with allied powers including the US.
Albanese announced that Iran’s ambassador and other diplomatic staff were being expelled, the first such move by an Australian government against another country since World War II.
Albanese reported that the Australian embassy in Tehran had been shut and its diplomats had already been rushed out of Iran. He declared he would introduce legislation to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG), a key component of the Iranian state apparatus, as a “terrorist” organization.
These are the kinds of actions generally taken against an adversary in war. Within the framework of diplomatic norms, such expulsions approach an act of war.
On August 21, a Special General Meeting (SGM) was held at Western Sydney University (WSU) Rydalmere campus. The event was part of a “National Student Referendum on Palestine” taking place across Australian universities between August 20 and 28. It was called by the WSU4Palestine group and overseen by the Student Representative Council (SRC).
The meetings are being held amid an upsurge of opposition among workers and students internationally to Israel’s escalating imperialist-backed genocide in Gaza. In Australia, this has been most sharply reflected in the up to 300,000-strong march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on August 3 and last weekend’s mass rallies in dozens of cities and towns across the country.
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What emerged centrally in the meeting was the question of how to take forward these sentiments and stop Israel’s barbaric ethnic-cleaning operation.
The perspective put forward by the meeting organizers was one of plaintive appeals to the complicit Labor government and university management to change their ways.
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...[Zach] Diotte, president of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at WSU moved an amendment to the [meeting's] WSU4Palestine resolution, which read:
1. This meeting condemns the Labor government’s complicity in the Gaza genocide. Through its support for the atrocities against the Palestinians, Labor has again revealed itself to be a blood-soaked party of imperialist war. The experiences of the past two years have demonstrated that the task is not to appeal to this government, but to organize the most determined political fight against it.
2. Urgent action must be taken to halt the genocide, including through the blocking of all weapons shipments and trade with Israel to cripple the Zionist war machine. That will come from below, not above.
3. Students should initiate a campaign in the working class for industrial action, including strikes, at the ports, the logistics hubs, the universities and more broadly, to make that a reality. Given that the unions have blocked such action and have not held up so much as one shipment to Israel, students must join with workers to establish rank-and-file committees against the corporatized, Labor-aligned and pro-war union bureaucracies.
Diotte’s speech and the IYSSE motion were met with enthusiastic applause from many attendees, and a desperate scramble from the organizers to block the motion and shut down any further discussion.
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Diotte was not allowed to speak again... and the alternative motion was quickly voted down. The impact of the IYSSE’s intervention into the meeting was palpable, however, and the organizers could not tolerate any further discussion. Although there was still a line of students waiting to speak and the meeting had been running for less than half an hour, the main motion was immediately put to a vote and passed.
As soon as the result was announced, organizers armed with megaphones began chanting and led the attendees out of the room on a comically brief march through part of the largely deserted campus.
18. Nikolaev appeals court rules to prolong detention of Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk
...Bogdan was arrested as a 25-year-old youth in ill health on the gravest of charges without proper evidence. The indictment relied overwhelmingly on articles from the World Socialist Web Site that he either wrote, translated or read and distributed, exercising his fundamental right to freedom of expression and thought. While the prosecution alleges that the World Socialist Web Site is a “Russian propaganda and information agency,” this is a transparent lie, disproven by the very articles that are used against Bogdan and the entire record of the WSWS and its publishing organ, the International Committee of the Fourth International. In court sessions since, the prosecution has failed to provide further evidence of its charges.
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The latest ruling by the Appeals Court of the Nikolaev (Mykolaiv) region against Bogdan Syrotiuk, and its distortion of an earlier ECHR ruling, once again underscore that the trial against Bogdan is part of an entire legal and political system that, at every step, violates the most basic democratic and human rights of the Ukrainian population.
Bogdan’s case before the European Court of Human Rights is, therefore, of the utmost significance not only for the fight for his release but for the defense of democratic rights and the fight against war throughout Europe and internationally. To support the campaign for his release, go to wsws.org/freebogdan, sign the petition, make a donation and help us make Bogdan’s case as widely known as possible.
19. Demand the freedom of Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky
