Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. The economic strategy of Leon Trotsky
This is the first part of a four-part lecture “Internationalist Socialism vs. Nationalist Reformism” delivered by Clara Weiss to the 2025 Summer School of the Socialist Equality Party (US) on the history of the Security and the Fourth International investigation.
To supplement the reading of this part of the lecture, readers are encouraged to study Leon Trotsky’s essay “Towards Socialism or Capitalism”, a revised translation of which the World Socialist Web Site will publish soon.
2. GE Aerospace workers walk out as defense industry strikes spread
More than 600 GE Aerospace workers walked out on a strike Thursday morning at the company’s giant engine manufacturing plant in Evendale, Ohio and a key parts distribution center in nearby Erlanger, Kentucky. Workers at the Cincinnati area facilities are opposing the company’s demands for a sharp increase in out-of-pocket healthcare costs and are fighting to recoup lost wages and benefits.
Picket lines were set up shortly after midnight. United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain was forced to announce the walkout during a livestream event with the UAW Local 647 Bargaining Committee late Wednesday night. If Fain and the UAW bureaucracy had to call the strike it was only because they knew they would not be able to push through another sellout contract on workers fed up with decades of UAW-backed givebacks.
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In a statement to striking workers, Will Lehman, a Mack Trucks worker who ran as a socialist candidate for UAW president in 2022, said:
The strike by GE Aerospace workers in Ohio and Kentucky are taking a stand for the whole working class. Millions of workers are working longer and harder than ever but can barely afford health care, housing and other living expenses. Far from opposing the relentless attacks on the working class, Fain and the other bureaucrats who run the UAW and other unions have collaborated in the destruction of our jobs and living standards.
Walking out is only the first step. If GE Aerospace workers are not to suffer the same sellout as workers in the Big Three, Mack Trucks and other companies, you must take the conduct of this struggle into your own hands by establishing a rank-and-file committee, which will outline your non-negotiable demands and a strategy to win them. The strike must be expanded throughout all of GE Aerospace’s operations, and workers must link up with striking Boeing workers to expand the strike throughout the defense industry.
We must reject demands that we sacrifice for “national security.” These lies are used to force workers to pay for the endless wars that only benefit the same oligarchs that are waging war against workers at home. We must link up the fight for our economic security with the fight against war and against the dictatorship Trump wants as part of the plan to destroy every gain the working class has achieved in over a century of struggle.
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GE, like Boeing and other defense contractors, has greatly benefited from the expanding wars and massive expansion of the US military budget. Earlier this year, the company announced a $5 billion contract with the US Air Force to build engines for F-15 and F-16 fighters and provide spare parts and services to “partner” countries. “This strategic partnership,” it continues, “highlights GE Aerospace’s pivotal role in supporting global military aviation readiness and underscores its commitment to delivering cutting edge technology to meet evolving defense needs.”
GE Aerospace completed its spinoff from General Electric in 2024. Between 2022 and 2024, the company made $17 billion. Last month, executives told investors they expect to make $8.2 billion in 2025. At least $16 billion in previous profits have been handed over to top investors through stock buybacks and other handouts.
For his part, CEO Larry Culp has been given a 985 percent raise over the last three years, pocketing $89 million last year alone. Culp makes nearly 1,300 times the median worker wage at the company.
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Far from leading a struggle against social inequality, war and dictatorship, the union apparatus is aligned with Trump’s trade war policies and is offering its services to suppress opposition on the home front, so American imperialism can expand its wars for global domination.
3. Kennedy’s firing of CDC director: A coup against science and public health
The firing of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Susan Monarez on Wednesday evening, coupled with the immediate resignation of four high-level public health officials in protest, represents a dramatic escalation of the Trump administration’s war against science and public health. This coordinated assault is unfolding as the United States is now in the midst of the 11th wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is moving to entirely ban COVID-19 vaccines.
On Thursday afternoon, hundreds of CDC employees and supporters staged a walkout outside the agency’s Atlanta headquarters in a powerful show of solidarity with the ousted officials. Current and former CDC staff members marched, held signs and applauded as three senior leaders who had resigned in protest—Chief Medical Officer Deb Houry, Dan Jernigan and Demetre Daskalakis—were escorted from the building by security personnel.
The events of Wednesday began with a tense confrontation Monday in Kennedy’s Washington office, where he and his principal deputy chief of staff Stefanie Spear demanded Monarez either resign or comply with two ultimatums: accept all recommendations from the agency’s vaccine advisory committee, whose members Kennedy had replaced with hand-picked allies hostile to childhood immunizations, and fire a number of high-level officials at the agency. When Monarez refused both demands and to “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives,” Kennedy moved swiftly to remove her.
On the same day as her firing, Kennedy announced new restrictions that fundamentally alter COVID-19 vaccine access, requiring that all Americans receive a doctor’s recommendation in order to receive a vaccine. For the vast majority of Americans, this effectively means they will lose access to COVID-19 vaccines without taking inordinate and in many cases prohibitive measures. Furthermore, multiple sources report that Kennedy is planning to fully revoke access to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines within months.
The timing of these actions is particularly ominous. They coincide with the 11th wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, with an estimated 1 in 93 Americans now actively infectious. Over 4 million Americans are now likely being infected each week. This surge is proceeding with virtually no mainstream media coverage or public health reporting. This information blackout coincides with the planned elimination of mRNA vaccines just as the winter respiratory virus season approaches, leaving the population totally unprotected against a pathogen that continues to evolve into new, potentially more dangerous variants. In addition, the purging of the CDC’s leadership comes less than three weeks after the August 8 attack on CDC headquarters by Patrick Joseph White, who was motivated by anti-vaccine disinformation that Kennedy has spent decades promoting. White fired over 180 rounds at the CDC campus, driven by his belief that COVID-19 vaccines had harmed him and others. In the aftermath, traumatized CDC employees have reported receiving harassing phone calls featuring gunfire sounds, while Trump has said nothing about the violent attack.
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Kennedy’s attacks on mRNA vaccines, one of the most revolutionary medical technologies in human history, represent perhaps the most devastating blow to pandemic preparedness and medical innovation. These vaccines have proven extraordinarily safe and effective, preventing millions of deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic. The cancellation of $500 million in mRNA vaccine research has terminated 22 critical projects aimed at developing vaccines for avian flu and other emerging threats.
Beyond infectious disease prevention, mRNA technology is showing great promise in cancer treatment. Moderna and Merck’s personalized mRNA cancer vaccine has demonstrated remarkable efficacy against melanoma, reducing cancer recurrence risk by 49 percent and metastasis risk by 62 percent in Phase 2 trials.
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Kennedy may be a particularly deranged individual, but his anti-vaccine conspiracy theories and reactionary policies have a very definite basis in social relations and serve specific class interests. His attacks on science provide ideological cover for the systematic dismantling of social programs and public health infrastructure demanded by the financial oligarchy. The apparent irrationality of Kennedy’s positions masks their rationality from the standpoint of a ruling class determined to eliminate all social spending that does not directly serve capital accumulation.
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The silence of the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO in response to the Trump administration’s war on science and public health is deafening. Rather than mobilizing opposition, they have remained largely silent, reflecting their own complicity in the broader attack on social programs and scientific institutions.
Kennedy’s attacks on vaccines and public health flow logically from the policies initiated under the Biden administration, which systematically undermined COVID-19 vaccine access and denigrated protective measures after ending the Public Health Emergency in May 2023. The Biden administration terminated federal vaccine mandates, ended free testing requirements for private insurers, and began transitioning COVID-19 vaccines to the commercial market. Trump and Kennedy have qualitatively deepened these attacks, but they build upon the foundation laid by Biden’s surrender to corporate interests that demanded an end to pandemic restrictions regardless of public health consequences.
4. Former Fed chair warns Trump’s sacking of Fed governor “profoundly dangerous” for US credibility
Former US Federal Reserve chair and treasury secretary Janet Yellen has weighed into the controversy surrounding President Trump’s sacking of Fed governor Lisa Cook for “cause,” warning it was not only “unlawful” but “profoundly dangerous” for the global position of the United States.
This assessment was made in a comment piece published in the Financial Times (FT) earlier this week.
“It represents a direct attempt to politicise the Fed, intimidate its leadership and bend monetary policy to the president’s will. This action threatens to end the independence of the Federal Reserve—and with it, the credibility of the US’s monetary policy both at home and abroad.”
On the issue of the sacking itself, Yellen took on Trump’s claim that Cook had been sacked for “cause” saying the law was clear.
“Federal Reserve governors serve 14-year terms precisely so they cannot be tossed aside by presidents who dislike their views or who seek their allegiance. Removal ‘for cause’ is intended for documented misconduct. ‘Accusations’ are not ‘cause.’”
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Whatever the truth of the accusations against Cook, given the fact that Trump is surrounded by convicted felons and is one himself, her sacking has nothing to do with any possible financial impropriety on her part. It is an escalation in his drive to take presidential control of the key financial institution of the US state and subordinate it to his policies.
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Trump’s war of words against Powell and his efforts to find a mechanism by which to sack him centre on the Fed’s refusal—at least so far—to cut its interest rates since last December and that even if cuts are made they will not be anything near the three-percentage point reduction Trump has demanded.
Trump’s actions, so often dismissed as some kind of idiosyncrasy, personality disorder, or megalomania—all of which may well exist—are being driven by powerful objective forces rooted in the deepening crisis of American capitalism.
One of its manifestations is the rise of government debt and the payment of interest on it which is fast becoming the biggest item in the US budget—outstripping even the military—and leading to a situation where more borrowing must be undertaken just to pay the interest on past debt.
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Trump’s actions are not an aberration. In fact, contrary to Yellen, they are as American as apple pie—a confirmation of the prescient analysis of Leon Trotsky nearly a century ago, that the real face of American capitalism would be revealed not in a period of boom but in one of crisis.
On August 28, Noticias 23, the local Spanish-language Univision station in Miami–Ft. Lauderdale, received several frantic phone calls from immigrants detained at the Florida Everglades concentration camp, reporting that guards were assaulting and beating them.
In phone calls recorded by the outlet, immigrants at the facility—dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” by President Donald Trump and his fascist supporters—said that at least four detainees were injured after guards deployed tear gas and began beating them.
“People started shouting because a relative had died, and they started shouting for freedom. At that moment, a prison team came in and started beating everyone,” said one of the detainees in one of the three phone calls.
He continued, “Right now, it’s unrest, and well, we have the helicopter overhead. Everyone here has been beaten up, many people have bled, brother, tear gas, we are immigrants, we are not criminals, we are not murderers.”
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The riot at the concentration camp comes one week after U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams issued a preliminary injunction barring any further transfers to the facility and ordering it to be shut down within 60 days. Williams’ decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by a coalition of environmental groups and the Miccosukee tribe of Florida, who argued that the facility violated several environmental laws and endangered local species and tribal resources.
The state of Florida and the US federal government have asked Judge Williams to put her order on hold pending an appeal from the state. As of this writing, Williams has not ruled on the stay request. But hundreds of detainees have reportedly been moved to other detention facilities.
It appears the judge’s decision to shut down the camp infuriated the guards, who have sadistically taken out their anger on the remaining immigrants at the facility.
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The barbaric immigrant detention facility was hastily constructed two months ago in the middle of the Florida Everglades on a defunct airport tarmac. After construction was completed, Trump toured the facility with DeSantis, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, and the fascist House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
Trump hailed the camp as a model to be emulated and openly mused that it could be used to imprison and deport US citizens: “But we also have a lot of bad people that have been here for a long time. … They are not new to our country, they are old to our country. Many of them were born in our country. I think we ought to get them the hell out of here too. You want to know the truth.”
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In addition to being a colossal human rights abuse, the concentration camp is also a tremendous waste of money. The state of Florida signed approximately $405 million in vendor contracts to build and operate the facility, and by July 2025 had already paid out about $245 million, according to the AP. Because of the judge’s ruling, the AP estimated the state stands to lose approximately $218 million.
Court documents submitted by the Florida Department of Emergency Management and reviewed by WPTV, the local NBC affiliate in West Palm Beach, found that it could cost as much as $20 million to tear down the camp.
6. Kiev attack and NATO escalation threaten direct war between Russia and Europe
In the early hours of August 28, Russia launched its deadliest air assault on Kiev since July, killing at least 18–21 people, including several children, and wounding dozens more. More than 90 buildings were damaged, among them the offices of the European Union’s delegation and the British Council. The Kremlin claimed the attacks targeted military infrastructure, but the strikes ripped through residential districts and a shopping center.
The targeting of EU institutions marks a new stage in the escalation of the war. Moscow is sending a blunt message: it will not accept European troops in Ukraine. Just one day earlier, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had categorically rejected proposals to deploy European “peacekeepers” in Ukraine, contradicting US President Donald Trump’s claim that Vladimir Putin would be willing to accept such a force as part of a negotiated settlement. Peskov warned that NATO’s eastward expansion was one of the root causes of Russia’s 2022 invasion and that European deployments would be treated as hostile acts.
The logic of the war is leading directly toward a military clash between Russia and Europe, threatening the lives of millions and the destruction of the entire continent.
Far from backing down in the wake of Russia’s attacks, European governments seized on them to issue new threats and accelerate the war drive. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer accused Putin of “sabotaging any hopes of peace.” French President Emmanuel Macron denounced Russian “terror and barbarism.” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a 19th sanctions package, pledged new tours of frontline EU states and vowed to turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine” bristling with Western weapons. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared from aboard the warship Bayern that Russia was “testing our readiness” and threatened that Berlin would do “everything” to defend NATO territory.
These statements are not defensive but aggressive. The claim that the European imperialist powers are defending “freedom” and “peace” against Russian aggression is war propaganda. Russia’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine does not change the fact that NATO systematically provoked the conflict over decades, expanding to Russia’s borders in violation of its promises, encircling Moscow militarily and transforming Ukraine into a forward base of NATO.
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Germany’s aggressive course is not defensive but a continuation of its historic war aims: control over Ukraine, access to Russian raw materials and domination of the Eurasian landmass. These aims were central to the German offensives in both world wars. Today, they are once again being pursued under conditions of capitalist crisis, deepening social inequality and intensifying inter-imperialist rivalries.
The drive to world war is inseparable from the assault on the working class at home. Trillions are being funneled into arms while wages, pensions, health care and education are slashed. To suppress opposition, the ruling class is building up the police, intelligence agencies and authoritarian state structures.
Contract negotiations for 3,200 striking Boeing machinists in St. Louis, St. Charles, Missouri and Mascoutah, Illinois between US defense contractor Boeing and the International Association of Machinists (IAM) bureaucracy have been stalled until after Labor Day, on September 5.
A clear strategy is emerging to defeat the militancy of the rank-and-file, who have been striking since August 5. With the assistance of the IAM leadership, which is providing a meager $200 a week in strike pay, Boeing is trying to starve workers into submission.
At the same time, the aerospace giant has received the clear backing of Wall Street and the American state. Just as talks were being tabled, Boeing on Tuesday was able to secure a $36.2 billion deal with Korean Air, which has been looking to update its fleet, including the purchase of 103 of the company’s latest aircraft. The airline also made an engine maintenance agreement with General Electric to last for 20 years worth $13.7 billion.
Boeing announced the deal with South Korea’s flagship air carrier amid the summit between South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and US President Donald Trump. Press reports indicate the Boeing deal was one of the many discussed, with Trump using the 15 percent tariff he imposed on South Korea in July, and the threat of more, to secure other favorable trade agreements for American companies.
In other words, just as with the $10 billion loan Boeing received last year to weather the strike of the 33,000 commercial workers in Seattle, Oregon and California, the company is again getting the financial backing of the entire ruling class.
8. German cabinet agrees to new Military Service Law and installs National War Council
On Wednesday, the German cabinet introduced into parliament (Bundestag) a draft law for a new system of military service. With this, the ruling class is intensifying its efforts to massively expand the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) and recruit the necessary cannon fodder for German imperialism’s upcoming wars. At the same time, the government decided to establish a National Security Council—another step toward militarization and the transformation of the state in an authoritarian direction.
The draft Military Service Modernization Act approved by the cabinet provides for the introduction of a new conscription register starting January 1, 2026. All young men between the ages of 18 and 25 must complete a questionnaire; women may do so voluntarily. Suitable candidates will then be summoned for a medical examination.
Beginning in 2027, medical exams will become mandatory for all men. Service is to be made more attractive through significantly higher pay: conscripts will in future be paid the same as short-term soldiers, with net monthly wages exceeding €2,000.
Officially, military service is initially voluntary. However, Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (Social Democratic Party, SPD) made clear that compulsory elements are unavoidable in the medium term: “The moment we establish that [voluntary recruitment] does not work, a decision will have to be made to reintroduce conscription on a mandatory basis,” he stated in an interview with broadcaster Deutschlandfunk.
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This current return to conscription resembles less the post-World War II war draft and more the historical precedent of 1935: back then, Hitler and the Nazis reintroduced conscription to prepare German imperialism for World War II. Today, too, the reintroduction of conscription is directly tied to aggressive rearmament and war preparations.
Significantly, Pistorius on the same day attended the inauguration of a new Rheinmetall munitions factory in Unterlüß, Lower Saxony—together with Finance Minister, Vice Chancellor and SPD leader Lars Klingbeil and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. At full capacity, the plant is set to become Europe’s largest munitions factory, producing 350,000 155-millimeter shells annually by 2027. Along with other sites, Rheinmetall aims to reach 1.5 million shells per year and establish itself as the leading producer in the Western world.
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In parallel, Klingbeil is preparing a war budget that will triple defense spending to €153 billion by 2029 and raise it long term to five percent of GDP (€225 billion annually). This is to be financed by €1 trillion in new debt—paired with drastic social spending cuts. Merz bluntly stated last weekend: “The welfare state as we have it today is no longer affordable.”
Eighty-four years after the start of Hitler’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, German tanks are once again rolling east. With the permanent stationing of a brigade in Lithuania, the Bundeswehr, for the first time since 1945, is deploying a fully equipped combat unit directly on Russia’s border.
American rail companies continue to refuse to follow or improve safety measures more than two years after the derailment disaster in East Palestine, Ohio. Following the disaster, which released over 115,000 gallons of toxic vinyl chloride into the environment, all six Class I rail companies agreed to join a federal program to improve safety on railroads. However, reporting by the Associated Press indicates that none of them has taken any real steps or fulfilled any promises to participate.
The program, called Confidential Close Call Reporting System, or C³RS, is designed to allow rail employees to report mistakes, close calls and unsafe actions by the rail companies without fear of reprisal. The reporting is conducted through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) on behalf of the Federal Rail Administration (FRA) and provides protection against corporate disciplinary action if certain criteria, such as that no one was injured or that an employee did not break the law, are met.
Both BNSF and Norfolk Southern conducted partial trials of the system but never fully adopted it, while Amtrak and smaller freight railroads have officially joined and report a 20 percent decline in accidents. An additional study from 2022 by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found an improvement in safety culture and the discovery of new safety issues under the program.
Despite the clear benefits, major rail companies insist that a punitive approach, in which rail employees are harshly punished and shoulder the blame for any and all safety issues, is preferable. They complained that C³RS was slow and ineffective compared to their own internal safety systems and argued that it would allow employees to become “repeat offenders” of safety violations by allowing them to take advantage of protections against retaliation.
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Heavily integrated with Wall Street, the Class I railroads are seeking to funnel as much money from the working class to the banks and financial institutions as possible. Over several decades this has taken the form of neglect for basic safety practices and proper infrastructure maintenance and is now manifesting in an all-out push for one-person crews and the destruction of thousands of railroad jobs.
In the face of this historic attack on rail workers and their safety and those of working class communities, the response of the trade unions has been complicity. The union bureaucracy collaborated with management and the Biden administration to scuttle a 2022 rail strike before it could take place, as the union leaders sat on the working group committee for C³RS. Meanwhile, they have refused to mobilize workers when the rail companies rejected any responsibility to improve safety after East Palestine.
Instead, the union bureaucrats accept the so-called “right” of the rail companies to profit, and they serve as their faithful labor police, selling their ability to suppress workers’ outrage in exchange for the ability to extract dues money from the membership to fund their bloated salaries. The major rail unions are currently ramming through a series of sellout contracts with even worse wage increases than the one imposed by Congress three years ago.
10. New Zealand intelligence report accuses China of “foreign interference”
The New Zealand Security Intelligence Service (SIS) released its annual “Security Threat Environment” report on August 21. The document purports to give an “assessment of violent extremism, foreign interference and espionage in New Zealand.”
The 30-page report has two basic purposes. Firstly, it serves as propaganda to justify the National Party-led government’s agenda—fully supported by the opposition Labour Party—to double New Zealand’s military budget and integrate the country into the far-advanced US plans for war against China.
Secondly, it seeks to justify the expansion of domestic surveillance, censorship, and other attacks on the rights of New Zealand citizens and migrants, in the name of countering “violent extremism” and “foreign interference.”
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China is described as the “most active” state undertaking “foreign interference,” which the SIS defines as seeking “to influence, disrupt, or subvert New Zealand’s national interests by deceptive, corruptive, or coercive means.”
This assertion has been repeated uncritically by the media, even though the SIS provides no actual evidence of Chinese espionage or “interference.” No one linked to Beijing has been arrested or charged with such activity.
A statement by the Chinese Embassy in Wellington denounced the accusations as “entirely unsubstantiated and groundless, saturated with ideological bias and a Cold War mentality.” It said the SIS’s aim was “to sow discord, obstruct bilateral engagement” and undermine friendly relations between China and New Zealand, “all in service of [a] certain geopolitical agenda.”
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The prominent pro-US academic Anne-Marie Brady, who welcomed the SIS report, has repeatedly labelled Chinese language learning groups, student organizations and media outlets in NZ as “fronts” for the Chinese Communist Party, and called for them to be subject to surveillance.
The most well-known recent example of someone who was investigated by the SIS as an alleged “foreign agent” is the journalist Mick Hall, who was subjected to a media-driven hate campaign in 2023 and forced out of his job at Radio NZ. His “crime” was making entirely factual edits to articles about the US-NATO proxy war with Russia over Ukraine—which undermined the pervasive anti-Russia war propaganda—for which he was smeared as a “Russian agent.”
Draft legislation currently before parliament would create a new specific offense of “foreign interference,” punishable by up to 14 years in prison. The bill, which is supported by the opposition Labour Party, would provide the means to prosecute anti-war activists and socialists by labeling them as “foreign agents” acting against “national interests.”
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During the First and Second World Wars, New Zealand governments established a police state, which banned socialist and anti-war publications and imprisoned hundreds of people on “sedition” charges for opposing the war.
In response to the historic crisis of capitalism, the imperialist powers led by the US are now plunging towards a third world war aimed at dominating the world’s markets and resources. New Zealand is directly involved on multiple fronts: NZ troops in Britain are training Ukrainian conscripts to fight Russia, and in the Middle East, assisting in the US-led bombing of Yemen; and NZ is openly supporting US-led warmongering against China.
The ruling elite is strengthening the powers of the state in preparation to suppress mass opposition to war, genocide and to the deepening attacks on living standards and public services that are being carried out to fund the military. The National Party-led government is proceeding with the full support of Labour and the union bureaucracy, which is blocking any organized opposition by workers.
11. “Plastics crisis” endangers humanity and all aspects of the environment, concludes Lancet study
“The world is in a plastics crisis” declares a review published August 3 by The Lancet medical journal. “Countdown on health and plastics” is a study co-authored by Professor Philip J. Landrigan, a pediatrician and epidemiologist, in collaboration with contributors including biologist Professor Martin Wagner and 24 others across a range of disciplines including marine ecology and law.
The review opens with a stark warning: “Plastics are a grave, growing, and under-recognized danger to human and planetary health. Plastics cause disease and death from infancy to old age and are responsible for health-related economic losses exceeding US$1·5 trillion annually.”
Global capitalist commodity production is the driving force behind this growing threat to planetary health. Or as the review puts it: “The principal driver of this crisis is accelerating growth in plastic production”. Global plastic output has grown by a factor of at least 250, “from less than 2 megatons (Mt) in 1950, to 475 Mt in 2022, with the most rapid increases seen in the production of single-use plastics.”
Plastic waste has increased in direct proportion to skyrocketing plastic production. that will nearly triple by the year 2060 without intervention.
The study describes plastic as “the defining material of our age.” The authors note that plastics are “flexible, durable, convenient, and perceived to be cheap. Plastics are ubiquitous in modern societies, and have supported advances in many fields, including medicine, engineering, electronics, and aerospace.” But its widespread use has huge “hidden economic costs borne by governments and societies.”
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As the Lancet reviewers point out, the damage represented by plastics has been understood by scientists for decades. Sixty years ago, the first reports emerged of “plastic waste obstructing the gastrointestinal tracts of seabirds, entangling sea turtles, and killing marine mammals.”
Importantly, the study explains how the impacts of plastic pollution “fall disproportionately upon low-income and at-risk populations.” In every country, without exception, it is the working class which lives closest to polluting industries, stinking refuse dumps, recycling, power and incineration plants, and heavily polluted roads and motorways, and must breathe the most polluted air. In a vastly unequal society, the super-rich can move uphill, upstream and upwind, away from the worst environmental pollution created by the corporations they own.
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The study’s authors are correct to conclude that worsening pollution is not inevitable. But their claim that government regulation and legislation can prevent the plastics crisis from metastasizing into a full-scale human and planetary disaster is wishful thinking. Pollution has reached such catastrophic levels because capitalist governments in every country are beholden to transnational corporations and the multi-billionaires who own them.
The publication of the Lancet review was timed to coincide with UN negotiations toward what was hailed as a landmark treaty to end plastic pollution. But member states failed to get a deal over the line at the end of December 2024, and the latest set of talks, the sixth in under three years, ended August 14 in ignominious failure.
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The Lancet review’s findings are an indictment of the profit system and its incompatibility with human need, and ultimately the very survival of the planet. Scientists and the working class must link arms against the capitalist nation-state system rooted in production for profit and the anarchy of private competition. The colossal fortunes of the billionaires must be expropriated and placed under social ownership. The rational use of plastics alongside finding new alternatives—and their disposal without further environmental degradation—requires the global reorganization of society on a socialist basis under democratic workers’ control.
12. Sri Lanka: SEP holds online public meeting on postal workers’ strike
On Monday, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka held a successful online public meeting titled, “What is the way forward for striking postal workers?”
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Speakers placed the struggle of postal workers within the broader crisis of Sri Lankan capitalism and the need for workers to form independent action committees to fight the government’s IMF-dictated measures.
13. The growing wave of workplace deaths in Italy and the need to build Rank-and-File Committees
The surge in fatal workplace accidents in Italy exposes the alliance between the state, corporations and union bureaucracy, highlighting the urgent need for rank-and-file committees and an international struggle against capitalist exploitation.
14. 1,400 University of Minnesota workers ready to strike as Teamsters bureaucracy holds them back
More than 1,400 custodians, cooks, maintenance and dorm workers at the University of Minnesota were prepared to walk out on Wednesday, August 20—the first system-wide strike at the university in nearly five decades. But after workers voted 97 percent to authorize a strike, the Teamsters Local 320 bureaucracy called off the walkout at 11 p.m. the night before, declaring it would “study” the administration’s “last, best, and final” offer.
Voting on this offer ended on Tuesday, August 26. The Teamsters union recommended a “No” vote while simultaneously refusing to set a new strike date, effectively locking workers into the bargaining table and demobilizing the rank and file.
There is little to “study” in the new offer that workers have not already made up their minds about. A quick review of the proposal shows it is essentially a pay cut in disguise. Wages amount to 5 percent increases over the next two years, plus a total of $1,000 in “sign-on” bonuses. This is a real wage cut once the July CPI spike of 0.2 percent month-on-month (3 percent annualized) and a projected 10 percent jump in health insurance premiums are factored in. Since 2022, real wages for these workers have fallen more than 12 percent; the current offer guarantees another three years of decline.
15. How Australia’s pseudo-left Socialist Alternative covers for the union bureaucracy
A session at last weekend’s “Socialism 2025” conference in Sydney, run by Socialist Alternative (SAlt) provided a revealing insight into the pseudo-left organization's attitude to the trade union bureaucracy and the working class.
Titled “Socialist strategy in trade unions: rank and file versus bureaucracy,” the session used minor criticisms of the union apparatus to cloak what was in fact a crude defense of the status quo, aimed at promoting the conception that no alternative exists or can be built to the existing unions and their leaderships.
SAlt’s concern, expressed starkly in the discussion following the report, is that, despite the efforts of the entire pseudo-left to glorify the unions and cover up their track record of continual betrayal, workers are turning against the bureaucracy or quitting the unions in disgust and frustration.
The session was a microcosm of the conference as a whole. Against a backdrop of growing opposition to genocide, war, state and federal Labor governments and capitalism itself, SAlt spent the weekend glorifying protest politics and promoting the fraud that “real change” can be achieved through appeals to the political establishment and its left-populist electoral front, NSW Socialists.
16. Australian defense minister visits Washington to desperately seek Trump-Albanese meeting
A sudden, unscheduled visit by Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles to Washington this week had an air of crisis to it. For days, there was confusion over why Marles had made the trip and who he had met.
This morning, the purpose became clear with unnamed sources telling media outlets including the Australian and the Australian Financial Review that Marles had been dispatched on a mission to secure a meeting between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and US President Donald Trump.
While in Washington, Marles had reportedly given unspecified commitments to boost Australian military spending, following a concerted and public campaign for such an increase by the top representatives of the US government.
The trip, and the circumstances surrounding it, point to the rather desperate efforts of the Australian Labor government to solidify and deepen relations with the fascistic Trump administration.
Labor is seeking to ensure the continuation of the AUKUS military pact directed against China, and a broader expansion of military relations which have already transformed Australia into a frontline state for a catastrophic US-led war in the Indo-Pacific.
17. Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, Middle East
Africa
Kenya:
Health workers continue months-long strike in Kiambu county over healthcare system crumbling from lack of funding
Health workers continue months-long strike in Kiambu county over healthcare system crumbling from lack of funding
Nurses at Busia and Trans Nzoia county hospitals continue stoppage over pay and conditions
Protesting pupils at secondary school in Siaya county school demand the right to a decent education
Nigeria:
University lecturers protest and prepare for national stoppage over pay and conditions
Judiciary staff in Kwara State, Nigeria walk out over pay and conditions
South Africa:
Western Cape fish processing workers’ indefinite stoppage over pay and union rights
Europe
Cyprus:
Co-operative workers in Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus strike against austerity cuts and redundancies
Germany:
DPD parcel delivery workers in Hamburg walk out over cost-cutting job shake-up
Serbia:
Air traffic controllers strike for salary increase
Spain:
Hospital workers in Madrid, Spain protest to highlight staff shortages
Hospital workers in Madrid, Spain protest to highlight staff shortages
United Kingdom:
Union call off walkouts by refuse workers in Wrexham, Wales over changes to working patterns
Union call off walkouts by refuse workers in Wrexham, Wales over changes to working patterns
National Coal Mining Museum workers in Wakefield, England begin pay strike
National Coal Mining Museum workers in Wakefield, England begin pay strike
Healthcare assistants at Nottingham University Hospital Healthcare Trust, England win regrading battle
Healthcare assistants at Nottingham University Hospital Healthcare Trust, England win regrading battle
Iran:
Oil workers protest wages as protests across Iran continue over conditions
Oil workers protest wages as protests across Iran continue over conditions
Iraq:
Halliburton workers protest termination of contracts
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