Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site toda
1. The victory of fascism in Germany and the call for the Fourth International
This is the first part of the lecture “The Revolution Betrayed” delivered by Johannes Stern and Jordan Shilton to the 2025 Summer School of the Socialist Equality Party (US) on the history of the Security and the Fourth International investigation.
2. Which way forward for the working class after the fall of the French government?
Last night, President Emmanuel Macron named his close associate, Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu his fifth prime minister in less than two years, after Prime Minister François Bayrou’s minority government fell Monday. Bayrou had proposed €44 billion in social cuts to fund France’s sovereign debt and its military build-up. Now, with a hung parliament, a divided electorate, and record 85 percent disapproval of Macron, yet another weak government will confront the workers.
As the union bureaucracies call protest strikes for next week, protests are erupting today as workers and youth across France take to the streets in “Block Everything” protests. This loose coalition of local protests, organized on the Telegram app, calls to blockade key infrastructure and for Macron to resign—a demand supported by two-thirds of the population. Against them, far-right Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau is mobilizing 80,000 riot police.
The working class is entering into struggle against a universal turn by the capitalist oligarchy towards fascistic forms of rule. As Trump orders military units to occupy Washington and Chicago, and Britain’s Labour Party launches mass arrests of anti-Gaza genocide protesters, French workers are facing a police state. Calls to “Block Everything” reflect a developing sense that only a general strike, mobilizing the full strength of the working class, can fight back against austerity and repression.
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There must be a reckoning with organizations that have blocked struggles against Macron—above all, the party and union bureaucracies of the New Popular Front (NFP) led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Yesterday, its social democratic, Green and Stalinist members briefly and unsuccessfully offered themselves as ministers to Macron, as its union officials refused to support today’s protests.
Mélenchon has affected a more radical posture, endorsing calls for a general strike and demanding Macron resign. However, he proposes to use workers’ struggles only as a tool to install a new capitalist government. As he said on a prime-time TV interview after Bayrou’s fall, he wants new policies after Macron falls, to give “the good people, the entrepreneurs of this country … visibility on what will happen.”
This is a political trap for the workers. Any capitalist government taking office after Bayrou will wage war abroad and rule by dictatorship and class war at home. Under pressure from Trump’s trade war, French imperialism is arming itself and plunging headlong into war, even as the banks demand France pay down its gigantic debt (114 percent of GDP) via deep austerity.
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One must recall the role of the NFP’s Greek affiliate, SYRIZA (the “Coalition of the Radical Left”). Elected in 2015 on promises to end EU austerity, it responded to financial speculation against Greek debt by capitulating, imposing deep austerity and building concentration camps for refugees.
The working class finds itself at a historic turning point, at which the lessons of the 1930s and the struggles of the working class against the rise of fascism must urgently be learned. Two stark alternatives are presented. Either the capitalist oligarchy builds a fascistic dictatorship to crush the working class, or the working class wages a revolutionary struggle on a socialist program to expropriate the oligarchs. This requires breaking through the straitjacket of the union bureaucracies and building genuine, rank-and-file organizations dedicated to prosecuting the class struggle.
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The Parti de l’égalité socialiste proposes the following demands, on which a political offensive can be waged in the working class to build support for the IWA-RFC:
Impound public bailout funds, expropriate the capitalist oligarchy!
Workers must reject the lie that there is no money for social programs and jobs. The trillions of euros of public funds monopolized by the capitalist oligarchy in France and across Europe must be impounded and used to fund jobs and social programs. This requires a struggle by the working class to expropriate the oligarchy and turn Europe’s major enterprises into a network of public utilities, serving the interests of the people.
Bring down Macron, abolish the Fifth Republic’s executive presidency!
The French bourgeoisie rules against the people by police repression and mass arrests of strikers. The executive presidency of France’s 1958 constitution, the nerve center of plots against democracy, must be abolished. Ultimately, ending attacks on democratic rights will require the transfer of power to organizations of the working class: Just as there can be no socialism without democracy, there can be no democracy without socialism.
No to imperialist war, dismantle NATO! End the military build-up!
Plans to send French troops to Ukraine, rejected by the overwhelming majority of the people, must be stopped. France must leave the imperialist NATO alliance, which threatens to trigger a nuclear war with Russia, as part of an international struggle by the working class to dismantle NATO and end its wars. Not a penny should go to military spending increases for “high-intensity war,” that is, mass killing like the current fratricidal slaughter of Russian and Ukrainian soldiers.
Stop the Gaza genocide! No persecution of opponents of genocide!
Workers in France and internationally must block the production and delivery of arms to Israel. The prosecution of opponents of the Gaza genocide on bogus anti-terrorism or antisemitism charges must end. Israeli officials responsible for the genocide, like French and NATO officials complicit in it, must be prosecuted.
Stop the persecution of immigrants! For the international unity of the working class!
The struggle for socialism is inseparable from the struggle for the international unity of the working class. Workers must oppose the persecution of immigrants, the setting up of mass detention camps for refugees, and humiliating laws like those banning Muslim clothing in French schools. This is essential to overcoming attempts by the ruling elite to divide workers along national lines and thus block a European struggle against war and capitalism.
For the United Socialist States of Europe!
Workers and youth in France have powerful allies in the millions of workers across Europe and internationally opposed to war, fascism, genocide and austerity. Bureaucrats and parliamentarians will stand in the way. Workers must build rank-and-file organizations of struggle and a political movement to transfer power to the working class in France, across Europe and internationally, replacing the capitalist European Union with the United Socialist States of Europe.
3. French government’s fall expresses mounting global debt crisis
France has a government debt of €3.35 trillion which is expected to comprise 116 percent of GDP this year.
The French government, as with many others, has been able to pile up debt to historically unprecedented levels because for a decade and a half after the 2008 crisis, followed by the euro crisis of 2012, central banks kept interest rates at or near zero. But now the chickens have come home to roost and with the rise in interest rates since 2022 the interest bill has soared. In the case of France, it has risen from €26 billion in 2020 to €66 billion today.
The French financial crisis is the expression of a rapidly developing global trend. According to the International Monetary Fund, the amount of debt as a percentage of annual economic output has doubled since 2007 to reach 80 percent. The IMF has said public debt could reach 100 percent of global GDP by the end of the decade. The United Nations agency UNCTAD reported that global public debt reached around $102 trillion in 2024, an increase of $5 trillion over the previous year.
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The debt crisis is most severe in the US, the heart of the global capitalist system. Government debt has risen to $37 trillion and the interest bill of $1 trillion a year is rivaling the budget outlays on the biggest item, military spending. If the US had not yet reached stage of France or the UK, it is only because the dollar is the global currency providing it with “exorbitant privilege.”
But the dollar’s role is being called into question. Throughout this year its value has been falling in international markets—it is down 10 percent from the start of year—and there is growing concern about the stability of US financial institutions which form the foundation of the global financial system.
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The erosion of confidence in the US and the dollar is seen in the rising price of gold. On Monday it reached $3600 per ounce, hitting $3500 just a week before.
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The shifts in the bond market indicate that a turning point is being reached. As Bloomberg columnist Allison Schrager recently noted the major economies have “no earthly way of paying for all of their debt.”
“The last few decades of low rates lulled investors, companies and governments into believing that they could keep borrowing and not face any costs—that they could essentially live in a world without economic trade-offs. Higher rates mark the end of this era of magical thinking.”
She did not specify or go into detail as to what those “trade-offs” would be. But they are already emerging in plain sight. They involve massive attacks on the social position of the working class and all the gains of the post-war period, accompanied by escalation of authoritarian and fascist forms of rule to impose them, the development of which is already well underway.
4. London Underground workers speak from picket lines: “We don’t do this lightly, we need change”
London Underground workers interviewed on the picket lines have spoken up against Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan, government funding cuts to Transport for London (TfL), and the devastating impact of job losses, rostering practices, and de-staffing on their conditions and passenger safety. They also defended colleagues targeted by the Starmer government’s expanding dragnet of anti-immigrant measures and deportations
The week-long rolling strike by more than 11,000 Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) members on the Tube and Docklands Light Railway (DLR) began on Friday. The DLR was shut down entirely today, with trains idled in stabling sidings. The following comments are from striking train drivers, station and revenue staff at stations on the Northern and Jubilee Lines.
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A worker:
“I’m proud of everyone on the picket line. We’re standing up together against fatigue, cuts, attacks on colleagues’ visas, and for proper funding of public transport. That’s what this strike is about.”
5. United States: Mamdani, Sanders and the fraud of “fighting the oligarchy” via the Democratic Party
Supporters of the Socialist Equality Party campaigned among the 2,000 attendees at Saturday’s “Fighting Oligarchy” event, emphasizing the need to reject Mamdani’s and Sanders’ efforts to channel opposition back into the Democratic Party and sabotage a genuine fight against the oligarchy. They distributed hundreds of statements, which concluded:The fight against oligarchy and dictatorship is necessarily a fight against capitalism itself. It requires the independent mobilization of the working class, in the United States and internationally. It requires a complete break from the Democratic Party, which paved the way for Trump. And it requires the development of a genuine socialist leadership.
The Socialist Equality Party says openly what Sanders and Mamdani will not: Trump is implementing a fascist dictatorship, with the complicity of the Democrats, and only the working class, armed with a socialist program, can stop it. Do not let your opposition be misdirected or suffocated. Join the fight to build a real socialist movement of the working class. Study the lessons of history. Read the World Socialist Web Site. Take up the fight for socialism.
6. Israeli attack on Hamas negotiators in Qatar exposes fraud of “ceasefire” talks
Israel carried out an airstrike on the Qatari capital of Doha Tuesday in an effort to kill the Hamas negotiators with whom it is nominally carrying out “ceasefire” talks. While the Hamas negotiators survived, the attack killed six people, including the son of Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s chief negotiator, as well as civilian bystanders.
All factions of the Israeli political establishment endorsed the attack. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted about it, saying, “At the beginning of the war, I promised that Israel would reach those who perpetrated that horror. Today that was done.”
The attack on Qatar is the second major act of international perfidy carried out by Israel in recent months. In June, Israel and the United States used negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program as cover to assassinate large portions of Iran’s military and civilian leadership.
The attempt to murder Hamas negotiators exposes, once again, the complete fraud of US and Israeli claims that they are seeking a negotiated settlement of the genocide they refer to as a “war.” In reality, the negotiations are a fiction, invoked by the US media to cover up the fact that the “war” being waged by the US and Israel is merely a pretext to conquer the entirety of Gaza and kill or expel the Palestinian population.
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The strikes targeted the Qatari capital of Doha and occurred near schools and embassies. Qatar is a key regional ally of the United States, and thousands of American soldiers are stationed at the country’s Al Udeid Air Base.
Doha has served as the location of “ceasefire” negotiations throughout the course of the genocide.
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While Trump said the strike “does not advance Israel or America’s goals,” he stopped short of condemning it outright, declaring, “eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.”
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Just hours before the strike on Qatar, the Israel Defense Forces ordered the evacuation of the entirety of Gaza City as it accelerates its campaign to fully occupy the city. Approximately one million people remain in Gaza City, and Israel hopes to drive them to the south, where they will be interned in concentration camps near Rafah in preparation for their forcible expulsion from Palestine.
“I say to the residents of Gaza, take this opportunity and listen to me carefully: you have been warned—get out of there!” Netanyahu said Tuesday.
Last month, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) hunger monitor officially pronounced a famine in Gaza. To date, hundreds of people have already died of starvation and malnutrition, and the number is only expected to climb higher.
Meanwhile, representatives of the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is seeking to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza and deliver food, said its ships were struck by two separate drone attacks over the past 24 hours, although no injuries were reported. Among the participants in the flotilla is climate activist Greta Thunberg.
The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has entered a new phase of its judicial operation targeting fundamental democratic rights and the Kemalist (CHP), which emerged as the leading party in the March 2024 local elections. This operation, targeting the CHP’s elected mayors, reached its peak in March with the arrest of Istanbul Metropolitan Mayor and the party’s presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu on “corruption” charges, sparking mass protests.
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The Socialist Equality Group and the World Socialist Web Site, despite their irreconcilable political differences, oppose the appointment of a trustee to the Istanbul administration of the CHP and the threat to remove its elected leadership as an attack on fundamental democratic rights. The right to vote and be elected, and the current, extremely limited multi-party democratic politics, are under threat. However, this attack, which essentially stems from the crisis of the global capitalist system and bourgeois rule, can only be stopped by building a working-class movement that is completely independent of the CHP, which is part of and defends this system.
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The increasing political pressure exerted by the Erdoğan government stems from the objective requirements of the ruling class. The building up of a police state, which has been reinforced for years with the support of the CHP, primarily targeting the Kurdish movement and the “left” opposition, is escalating in 2025 with Trump’s arrival in office. This occurred amid intensifying war in the Middle East (in which Turkey is deeply involved), an ongoing NATO war with Russia, and severe austerity measures against the working class at home.
At the same time, both the Kurdish nationalist DEM Party and the CHP and their pseudo-left supporters are helping to present this as an effort toward “peace and democratization” by participating in the commission established by the Erdoğan government in parliament as part of its attempt to negotiate with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). In reality, the Ankara-PKK agreement represents a reactionary effort by the Turkish and Kurdish bourgeoisie to reconcile their interests in alliance with the US in the Middle East’s war of redivision.
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Millions, even tens of millions, of workers and youth in Turkey are ready to take action against the Erdoğan government’s police state repression and social attacks, as demonstrated by the protests in March. However, just as much as Erdoğan, the CHP and its allies in the union bureaucracy, who ended this movement, fear a mass working-class movement targeting the capitalist system—the source of dictatorship— and are fundamentally opposed to it.
The CHP, which is deeply tied to NATO, follows the same policies as the Erdoğan government in the municipalities it runs, opposes strikes with violence and is incapable of waging the struggle for democracy which requires opposition to imperialism and austerity. Therefore, the critical task is to ensure the political clarification of the working class, which is the social base of this struggle, and to build the mobilization of the working class, independent of all capitalist parties, including the CHP, against the authoritarian regime, austerity, and imperialist war, based on an international socialist program. This means the building of the Socialist Equality Party.
8. Tougher asylum law in Greece criminalizes refugees
Refugees will in future be treated like criminals in Greece. That is the essence of the tougher asylum law that the Greek government, under the right-wing New Democracy (ND), pushed through parliament a week ago.
Those seeking protection who are denied asylum and remain “illegally” in the country now face heavy prison sentences and fines. These people have usually endured a life-threatening escape route and often given up their family’s entire savings to flee war, persecution and poverty in their homeland. Now, in Europe, they are not only treated like cattle, but also imprisoned if they do not “voluntarily” return to the misery from which they have just fled.
The new law was passed overnight September 2-3 with the votes of the ruling party, which has a majority in parliament. In July, the government had already decided to suspend all asylum applications from refugees from North Africa for three months, completely nullifying the right to asylum.
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The European bourgeoisie fully supports the toughening of asylum law in Greece and has already begun implementing similar far-right attacks on migrants in their own countries.
Last Wednesday, shortly after the vote on the Greek asylum law, the German government cleared the next hurdle in toughening its refugee policy: Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (Christian Social Union, CSU) pushed two laws through the cabinet to implement the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) in Germany. This allows for even stronger EU border fortification, faster deportations and the detention of refugees in camps at the external borders.
Germany has also resumed deportations of refugees to Greece this year. In previous years, there had been a de facto halt to deportations due to the devastating situation faced by refugees in Greece. Although the situation has further deteriorated, the Federal Administrative Court ruled in a landmark decision this April that there were no inhuman or degrading living conditions for refugees there.
In Britain, a far-right campaign is currently being waged by the government and establishment media against so-called “asylum hotels” in which refugees are accommodated. Tory politician Robert Jenrick, who could become the next leader of the Conservative Party, recently welcomed the proposals of far-right figure Nigel Farage to herd asylum seekers into concentration camps, but then tried to outflank him from the right: these camps should be “rudimentary prisons,” Jenrick said.
The attacks on refugees serve the ruling class in all countries to undermine democratic rights and prepare a broad offensive against all the social gains of the working class. Parallel to the latest asylum law, the Greek government is pushing ahead with military rearmament and toughening capitalist exploitation with the new labour law.
In order to divide and set workers against each other, the weakest and most defenceless—the refugees—are being targeted first and made scapegoats for social problems that are in fact the result of the capitalist crisis.
The Michigan school year opened with teachers returning to the classrooms without a labor agreement in multiple districts—including Grand Rapids, Pontiac, Clintondale, Utica, Kalamazoo, Ludington, Walled Lake, Waterford, Howell, Brighton, Ortonville, Farwell, Milan, Northville and Birmingham. In Pontiac and Clintondale, both economically devastated areas, educators have entered their second consecutive year under expired contracts.
Education funding in the state has never recovered from the withdrawal of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding by the Biden-Harris administration. The loss of pandemic relief funds has been compounded by inflation and increases in poverty, and the Trump administration’s cuts to federal school funding.
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Teachers looking to defend their jobs, livelihoods, the right to public education and democratic rights should lose no time in forming independent rank-and-file committees. These committees should immediately restore the trusted maxim: “No contract, no work.” They must also oversee all negotiations and contracts, stripping power from the union bureaucracy, which is blocking a struggle and allowing corporate and financial business interests to dictate terms.
The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) held an online meeting Sunday, “After the ballot: the way forward for postal workers.” It followed the Communication Workers Union (CWU) ballot last month on its pay award and agreements with new Royal Mail owners, billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Group.
World Socialist Web Site writer Tony Robson started by refuting CWU General Secretary Dave Ward and Deputy General Secretary Martin Walsh’s claim of an “overwhelming endorsement.” The 79.5 to 20.5 percent acceptance was in fact based on a historic low turnout: 57 percent of CWU members did not return a vote and only one in three voted in favor.
“The CWU bureaucracy has no mandate. Postal workers were told to rubber-stamp a framework agreement already imposed eight months earlier by the CWU’s postal executive on behalf of Kretinsky. The agreement endorsed EP Group’s £3.6 billion takeover and has set into motion the dismantling the Universal Service Obligation (USO) and laid the groundwork for gig economy working practices through the Optimised Delivery Model (ODM), piloted in 35 offices between February and July.”
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Robson concluded the meeting by stressing the importance of the PWRFC’s affiliation to the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. Postal workers globally face the same capitalist playbook: automation and AI used to destroy jobs and intensify exploitation and turn over the mail services to prioritization profits.
In the United States, the union bureaucracy opposes any mobilization of 600,000 postal workers against Trump’s privatization of USPS as part of his overall drive to erect a dictatorship on behalf of the oligarchy. In Canada, a national strike by 55,000 workers at Canada Post was outlawed by Trudeau’s government last December. Last month workers rejected a sellout contract, but action has been suppressed by the union apparatus which forced them back to work last year. A week-long strike in mid-August by 17,000 postal workers in Sri Lanka was forced back to work by their union, with none of their 19 demands met as the army was deployed by the government. “These struggles show the necessity of building a globally coordinated fight against the oligarchy, its governments and their servants in the union bureaucracy.”
11. New Zealand Māori Party MP’s racist attack on Labour Party members
Tākuta Ferris, a MP for Te Pāti Māori (TPM, Māori Party), published a blatantly racist social media post on September 4, which denounced white people, black people, Asians and Indians for supporting the Labour Party’s candidate in a by-election in the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate in Auckland.
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In the lead-up to polling day, Ferris posted a photograph of Henare’s multi-ethnic campaign team along with the statement: “This blows my mind!!! Indians, Asians, Black and Pakeha [white people] campaigning to take a Maori seat from Maori.”
In other words, the Tāmaki Makaurau electorate belongs to the Māori race, and therefore to TPM, which portrays itself as the only party that genuinely represents Māori and is not contaminated by other races.
Following a backlash in the media and from the Labour Party, TPM’s leaders issued an apology saying the party “does not condone the language” used by Ferris and had instructed him to remove the post. The statement declared: “Our movement is, and always has been, for the people. We leave nobody behind.”
None of this is credible. Ferris’ social media post was not an aberration; it is entirely consistent with TPM’s toxic and divisive racialist identity politics.
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The aim of such statements is to stoke divisions between Māori workers—who are among the poorest and most exploited in New Zealand—and working people of other ethnicities and nationalities, in order to prevent a unified struggle against the capitalist system.
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As the social crisis worsens, New Zealand’s capitalist parties are all, in one way or another, seeking to scapegoat immigrants and minorities—and, in TPM’s case, “white people”—for the soaring cost of living, over-crowded hospitals, rising homelessness, poverty and unemployment.
Nationalism and xenophobia are also being promoted in order to prepare the country to join future US-led imperialist wars, particularly against China.
12. Toronto International Film Festival to screen propaganda film for Israel’s genocide in Gaza
Acting as a cultural arm of Canada’s imperialist ruling elite, the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) will be rolling out the red carpet Wednesday for the world premiere of a film about the events of October 7, 2023 that provides propaganda cover for Israel’s genocide against the Gaza Palestinians.
The Road Between Us: The Ultimate Rescue, from director and producer Barry Avrich, is entirely silent about the Israeli state’s decades of brutal oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian people, and the violence and terror it has inflicted on the residents of Gaza and the West Bank over the past two years. The documentary film’s lens is exclusively focused on the efforts of retired Israeli Major General Noam Tibon to rescue family members caught up in the October 7 Gaza Palestinian uprising against the Zionist regime, which for more than 15 years had subjected them to a brutal and ongoing economic blockade.
13. United States: USW remains silent on Clairton Coke Works explosion
It has now been more than four weeks since the explosion at US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works that killed steelworkers Timothy Quinn and Steven Menefee and injured 10 others, yet the United Steelworkers union has remained almost completely silent.
The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) has initiated an independent, rank-and-file investigation into the August 11 explosion at US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works to uncover the truth about the conditions that led to this disaster.
Such an independent rank-and-file investigation will follow in the example of the IWA-RFC investigation into the death of the April 7 death of Dundee Engine skilled trades worker Ronald Adams Sr. Initial results of the IWA-RFC investigation found that among other items, the company, with the United Auto Workers blessing, distributed “cheater” keys that bypass lockout/tagout protections, which allowed the accident to happen.
The IWA-RFC investigation at US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works is completely independent from corporate management and the United Steelworkers bureaucracy, which works hand in hand with US Steel management to push production and profits at the expense of the health and safety of steelworkers.
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While the USW has not endorsed Trump’s decision to sign off on the Nippon Steel purchase, they have supported Trump’s tariffs and the unions are endorsing his “America First” trade war measures. They are making their pitch to help the ruling class to convert the United States and North America into a fortress for launching world war.
Steelworkers must reject the toxic nationalism of the USW in favor of a global strategy uniting steelworkers in every country against the corporate oligarchs in each country. Workers must reject the slogan of “America First” in favor of the slogan, “Workers of the World, Unite!”
This requires a fight against the corrupt union apparatus, building the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) as the new organizing center in a fight to transfer power from the union officialdom to the shop floor.
14. Serbian government escalates violence against protesters
Ongoing demonstrations and protests in many cities against the right-wing Serbian government led by President Aleksandar Vučić are being met with increasing police brutality.
The protests have now been going on for nine months. In addition to demonstrations attended by up to 500,000 people, universities across the country are being occupied by students with almost daily protests taking place in various cities.
The protests were initially triggered by the deaths of 16 people, including two children, when a train station canopy collapsed in the northern Serbian city of Novi Sad in November last year. The collapse of the canopy followed a reconstruction of the train station, but the dilapidated canopy was never replaced. Protesters blame the tragedy on the corruption rampant within the ruling party and the state apparatus.
The protests quickly became an expression of a rejection of the government’s anti-social policies and its resort to police-state methods. After initially responding to the movement with bans and intimidation, the government is now deliberately resorting to violence. Vučić and his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) are using not only regular police units but also paramilitary, fascist gangs.
15. Right-wing prime minister installed in Thailand
Anutin Charnvirakul, from the right-wing Bhumjaithai Party (BJT), was officially appointed last Sunday as Thailand’s new prime minister following his election by the House of Representatives on September 5.
The appointment of the third prime minister in just two years is an expression of the growing instability of the Thai political system. The two previous prime ministers were removed by the Constitutional Court on the bogus grounds of “ethical violations.”
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Anutin’s previous ministerial posts include deputy prime minister and public health minister in the military-led government of Prayut Chan-o-cha, the 2014 coup leader, formed after the 2019 election. The election—the first since the coup—took place on the basis of a constitution and rules written by the military, and amid widespread allegations of vote rigging.
As health minister, Anutin oversaw the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. He scapegoated “dirty” tourists while delaying the rollout of vaccines, rejecting early offers from Pfizer and Moderna in favor of those of Siam Bioscience, a company owned by the monarchy. Only 10 percent of the population had been fully vaccinated in August 2021 at the height of the Delta surge, resulting in 300 deaths a day.
Anutin now heads a minority government lacking in popular support. Even after gathering the support of 11 other minor parties, his coalition can only muster 146 seats in the 500-seat lower house of parliament. These parties include Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) and United Thai Nation (UTN), which both derive from the 2014 military junta and the party it established.
16. 22-year-old Palestinian held in high-security ICE detention for nearly 2 years
Taher Mohammed Taher Hasan, a 22-year-old Palestinian, has been held in a high-security ICE detention facility for 16 months, despite never being convicted of a crime.
Hasan first arrived in the US in September 2023 on a six-month visitor visa, intending to visit his cousin in Florida and return to Palestine before its expiry. However, after the launching of the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza in October of that year, as well as the increased violence across the West Bank and in his hometown of Nablus, Hasan grew increasingly fearful of returning home.
He made the decision to remain in the US, staying with friends in Texas, as any effort to return home would have posed life-threatening dangers. Hasan’s visa expired in March 2024.
While working as a locksmith around Waco, Texas, he received a call to assist someone locked out of their car. The client was located within a local military base. Upon entering the base, Hasan’s identification was checked, leading to his arrest and transfer to ICE custody.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) immediately initiated proceedings to remove him from the US. However, 16 months later, Hasan remains confined in an ICE detention facility, without any clear explanation for why he has neither been deported nor released.
“I lost two years of my life, my best years of life, without doing anything, without being charged [with] anything,” Hasan told the news organization Zeteo from the detention facility.
Hasan’s concerns about returning home to Nablus were completely justified. Just days after the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in October 2023, five of his close friends were brutally killed. According to the report in Zeteo, in October 2024, the Israeli military reportedly destroyed his family’s olive grove in Nablus, exploding grenades and obliterating trees that had been cultivated for generations.
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According to a petition filed by his attorneys in federal court, shortly after his detention, Hasan was forcibly woken in the middle of the night, taken to an off-site location, and subjected to hours of questioning by officers who identified themselves as FBI agents.
These agents delved into intrusive and politically motivated questioning, asking about his family, his presence at the military base, whether he was part of a terrorist group, and if he was attempting anything illegal.
Most significant, Hasan’s petition reveals that he was questioned about his political affiliations and pressured to become an informant, to “report to authorities about the activities of his friends and family in the West Bank.” The agents allegedly demanded he name everyone in his immediate family, offering, “We can help you if you help us.”
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The petition further alleges that his refusal to become a stooge for the US government and its Israeli proxy was met with punishment, saying, “after Hasan was sent back to the detention center, he was transferred to the high-security part of the prison ‘in retribution for his refusal to become an informant’.” This punitive transfer reveals his captors’ attempt to coerce and punish, turning a supposed immigration issue into political persecution.
Hasan’s detention has included conditions that his legal team describes as akin to “Guantanamo creep into the domestic detention environment.” Confined to a “high-security” section, he is forced to wear a “red shirt” identifying him among other high-security detainees, living in a cell infested with “cockroaches and bugs on the floors, walls, and beds.” Twelve men share a single room with him, all reliant on one toilet and one shower.
Beyond the squalor, Hasan lives in constant fear. The facility typically houses individuals deemed a “risk or violence, assault, or other forms of abuse,” leading Hasan to worry constantly about being assaulted “by his cellmates, who grow angry at him when he prays.”
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Meanwhile, Hasan has struggled to receive basic medical attention. He uses outdated prescription lenses, hindering his vision and exacerbating his stress amidst safety concerns. He has also suffered from a persistent toothache, causing him significant pain. “The impact of these conditions on Mr. Hasan’s long-term mental well-being is exacerbated by the extraordinary hardship his family is enduring in Palestine,” his petition states.
Hasan has been trapped in a “detention limbo” because, during the initial removal process, he designated Palestine as his deportation destination and sought asylum, a protection status under the Convention Against Torture (CAT), and statutory withholding of removal.
These latter two statuses are crucial protection mechanisms, preventing deportation to places where an individual faces torture or a risk to his life. His appeals for these vital protections were denied.
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The US government’s own guidance mandates that DHS “must remove or release detained aliens within 90 days of a final order of removal,” unless their release poses “a special danger to the public.” Yet, Hasan’s lawyers emphatically state they have received no notification of any determination that he poses such a danger.
The absurdity of the situation was exposed in June 2025 when, despite his DED status, ICE transported Hasan and 25 other Palestinians, handcuffed and shackled, to an airport in Dallas. They were given no information about their destination, but Hasan’s petition describes them being brought near a plane with its engines running, bearing the fuselage label “Oman.”
Hasan overheard one ICE official telling another Palestinian detainee they were being sent to Israel. Ultimately, only migrants of African and Latin American descent were boarded, and Hasan was later informed the departure was cancelled due to escalating tensions between Israel and Iran.
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This highlights the chaotic and arbitrary nature of the detention regime and its willingness to attempt deportations to war zones or hostile territories. Hasan’s legal team has launched a vigorous campaign to win his freedom, filing a petition in federal court challenging his detention.
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Speaking from the detention center, Taher Mohammed Taher Hasan expressed a “relief that he wasn’t facing the immediate danger from Israeli soldiers and settlers in Palestine.” He also expressed deep “sadness at not being able to be with and help his family, frustration in being unable to finish university and in being neither free nor deported home, and anger that he’s been detained for this long.”
[Eric Lee is Hasan's attorney.]
17. Sri Lanka: 15 killed in horrific Ella-Wellawaya bus accident
The terrible death of 15 people when a bus plunged over a 1,000-foot cliff on the Ella-Wellawaya road in Uva province on the night of September 4 has shocked many Sri Lankans. Those killed included the bus driver, nine women and two children, with about a dozen others injured.
Most of the victims were employees of the Tangalle Pradeshiya Sabha (a local government body) in the south of the island and their family members who were returning from a picnic in Nuwara Eliya. The injured have been admitted to the Diyatalawa and Badulla Teaching Hospitals.
Villagers and neighbours quickly gathered at the scene as soon as the accident occurred as did passengers from other vehicles. Doctors and other health workers from the Wellawaya and Badulla Teaching Hospitals, police personnel and army and air force soldiers worked strenuously to rescue the injured.
Assistant Superintendent of Police F. U. Wutler said the accident was believed to have been caused by the bus’s high speed and loss of control. Investigations have not yet confirmed these claims.
However, according to the bus conductor and another person who survived the accident, the driver said that the vehicle’s brakes suddenly failed, moments before the accident. Another survivor told the media that the driver made desperate efforts to control the bus at that time.
Sensational claims blaming the driver for the accident have been published and are being circulated on social media, but lack any concrete evidence.
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Obvious steps need to be taken, including major upgrades of the country’s dilapidated road system, regular checks on all vehicles, especially long-distance passenger buses, and safety measures, such as strong safety fences on both sides of dangerous steep mountain roads.
The JVP/NPP government, however, is totally committed to imposing the International Monetary Fund (IMF) drastic austerity agenda, including savage budget cuts, and will never allocate the required resources to prevent tragic toll on the island’s roads.
Promises to provide 1 million rupees ($US3,323) from the Presidential Fund to the families of those killed in the bus crash are simply a ploy to diffuse rising public anger.
A recent World Bank report titled Delivering Road Safety in Sri Lanka: Leadership Priorities and Initiatives to 2030 states: “Annual road crash deaths per capita in Sri Lanka are twice the average rate in high-income countries and five times that of the best performing countries in the world.
“Available data indicate an average of 38,000 crashes annually which result in around 3,000 fatalities and 8,000 serious injuries. Sri Lanka has the worst road fatality rate among its immediate neighbors in South Asia region.”
18. Epstein “birthday book” lays bare corruption of American ruling class
On Monday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Trump stooge James Comer (Republican-Kentucky) released several documents related to the sex trafficker of children Jeffrey Epstein. The most noteworthy is the “birthday book” compiled by Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s long-time associate and partner in crime.
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In releasing the book, Comer made clear his intent was to try and protect Trump. “It’s appalling Democrats on the Oversight Committee are cherry-picking documents and politicizing information received from the Epstein Estate today,” he wrote in a statement.
Comer denounces Democrats for “cherry-picking” the Epstein files, but the real bipartisan consensus is to cover up. The Democrats have taken up the Epstein crisis not to expose the crimes of the ruling class, but to divert mass opposition to Trump’s ongoing coup—his mass deportation operation, his military occupation of major American cities, his open embrace of fascist methods. Republicans, for their part, defend Trump outright. Neither party represents the interests of Epstein’s victims or of the working class.
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The release of Epstein’s “birthday book” is not simply another lurid scandal. It is a window into the true character of the ruling class. Here are not only Wall Street speculators, venture capitalists and Silicon Valley financiers, but two presidents of the United States—one Democrat, one Republican—offering warm tributes to a man whose entire existence was bound up with the sexual exploitation of children. Their words, preserved in their own hand, strip bare the fraud of bourgeois morality.
Epstein was not an aberration. He was an organic product of a social order in terminal decay. His “network” was nothing less than the American and international bourgeoisie itself: billionaires, politicians, celebrities; all of them bound together by money, privilege and complicity in crime. The joking tone of the book— women described as “fully depreciated,” Trump celebrating “wonderful secrets” inside the outline of a naked body, Clinton praising Epstein’s “irresistible curiosity”—reveals the utter corruption of this stratum.
19. Rifts intensify in Australia’s Liberal-National Coalition
Sharp divisions are erupting inside Australia’s opposition Liberal Party and its coalition with the rural-based National Party, producing a potentially existential crisis for one of the mainstays—together with the Labor Party—of post-WWII capitalist rule.
The immediate trigger for the latest public rifts were comments by Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, one of the Liberals’ most strident advocates of Trump-style far-right authoritarianism. She accused the Albanese Labor government of bringing in migrants because they voted Labor, and she nominated people from India as an example.
Despite demands from other Liberal leaders, worried by the impact on their already decimated voting base (almost two million people of Indian origin now live in Australia), Price has refused to apologize to Indian voters for her remarks, instead claiming they were taken out of context.
Price was clearly making a pitch to the efforts of far-right forces to make immigrants, along with refugees and international students, scapegoats for the continuing cost-of-living, housing affordability and social crisis affecting millions of working-class households. Her remarks followed far-right rallies, given extensive media coverage, featuring anti-immigrant racism, across Australia on August 31.
For all the criticism of Price for being so blatant in singling out Indian immigrants, she is far from alone in promoting anti-immigrant sentiment, thus providing fodder to far-right groups. The Labor government itself has slashed university enrollments by international students, rushed through plans for mass deportations to Nauru and announced plans to halve overseas migration to 235,000 annually for the next three years.
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Amid the global turmoil fueled by the Trump administration’s “Make America Great Again” aggression and tariffs, that program includes deepening cuts to social spending to boost corporate profits and a vast military expansion in preparation for war, above all for a US-led conflict with China.
Albanese’s government and the union bureaucrats, already widely distrusted by workers, will face mounting working-class opposition. Explosive struggles lie ahead, posing ever-more the necessity for workers and young people to turn to the only alternative to the capitalist agenda of war and austerity—the socialist program advanced by the Socialist Equality Party.
More than 1,400 custodians, food service workers, mechanics, gardeners, maintenance and sanitation workers across the University of Minnesota began to strike Monday and Tuesday, reportedly the first walkout since service workers at the school were unionized in the 1970s. The strike follows the rejection of the administration’s so-called “last, best and final offer” by an overwhelming 82 percent of Teamsters Local 320 members on September 5.
The strike began late Monday night at the Crookston and Morris campuses and was joined Tuesday by facilities in Duluth, Grand Rapids, Waseca and Austin, with the flagship Twin Cities campus joining later in the day. University representatives had announced that dining services have been reduced, custodial work curtailed and maintenance requests delayed.
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The decisive rejection of the contract and the decision to strike reflect growing anger among workers at decades of eroding living standards, as well as increased dissatisfaction with the union apparatus. One worker commented on Facebook: “A 5% raise and the newer workers have to wait for the steps to get 2% of that increase? The Teamsters never did anything about the pay grade steps when they sold them to me after they sold the longer term employees out with the steps in the first place.”
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Union officials are undoubtedly already planning to isolate the struggle and shut it down at the earliest opportunity, with a “new” offer which will be virtually indistinguishable from the one workers rejected, continuing the Teamster’s history of betrayals.
The Teamsters General President, Sean O’Brien, has cozied up to and thrown his support behind the would-be dictator Trump, whose policies and administration have declared war on workers, leading to massive cuts to life-saving Medicare and Medicaid programs, as well as attacks on democratic rights and science, to name only a few. Following his appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention to endorse Trump for president, he also worked to legitimize Trump’s tariffs, claiming they would support union jobs.
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This is why it is critical that workers take the initiative now to form rank-and-file strike committees under their control. An immediate appeal for support and solidarity actions should be made to students on the campus, as well as other university workers, teachers and nurses throughout the Twin Cities, and beyond.
Workers face a wealthy institution that claims budget constraints even as it sits on an endowment exceeding $6 billion. University President Rebecca Cunningham receives a salary exceeding $1 million, while the administration has already earmarked more than a million dollars to bring in strikebreakers. At the same time, the university has implemented tuition hikes and cutbacks to academic spending.
21.
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
