Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
The International Committee of the Fourth International welcomes with pride and enthusiasm the establishment of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi - Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International) as the Turkish section of the World Party of Socialist Revolution.
The formation of the section of the ICFI in Turkey is an event of immense historical significance. Although it was on the island of Büyükada (Prinkipo) in 1933 that the call for the building of the Fourth International was issued, the establishment of the SEP marks the first time that a party has been formed in Turkey based on the internationalist program and principles of Trotskyism.
2. Video announcement on the formation of the Socialist Equality Party (Turkey)
This is one or the three resolutions which the Socialist Equality Party branch in Türkiye (Turkey) agreed with upon its founding.
4. Gangster-like US-Japan “deal” sows the seeds of war
When the so-called trade deal between the US and Japan was announced on July 22 it contained vague provisions that Japan would invest $550 billion in the US.
The details of how this investment would be made were not spelled out. Last week they were in a series of documents—an executive order by US president Trump, two White House Fact Sheets and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)—which together set out some of the most extraordinary arrangements in economic history.
In essence, in return for having crippling tariffs imposed by Trump on Japanese cars and auto products reduced from 27.5 percent to 15 percent, Japan will supply $550 billion for investment in the US in industries determined by the president and from which the US will take 90 percent of the profits once the initial cost has been recouped.
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The personalized character of the agreement—a feature of all the measures being put in place by Trump to establish a dictatorship in the US—was underscored in a Fact Sheet issued by the White House on September 5. In general, official documents refer to governments, countries, state institutions with individuals designated not by their names but their titles. Not in this case.
The Fact Sheet said Japan had committed to provide “president Trump with $550 billion to invest into the United States towards critical industries of importance to our national security.” The money would be invested in US projects “selected by president Trump.”
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Within the exaggerated rhetoric, as we have noted previously, there is an element of objective reality. It is that such is the weakened economic position of the US—expressed not least in the fact that it has a $37 trillion government debt—it is driven to function in the global economy in the manner of a Mafia gangster extracting tribute from the rest of the world.
There has not been a great deal of coverage of the US-Japan agreement in the so-called mainstream press. However, a recent comment piece by Leo Lewis in the Financial Times did point to its extraordinary character and broader implications.
“The MOU set out an arrangement which, on one reading, reeks of coercion: a sovereign nation forced to funnel private and public-sector investment to a much richer one under a structure unashamedly directed by the US president,” he wrote. Moreover, as he indicated in his conclusion, it is a sign of what is to come.
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At the end of the 19th century as the imperialist epoch emerged, the nascent Japanese capitalist class was faced with a stark alternative: Either be carved up by the great powers as China had been and be reduced to colonial status, or embark on the road of imperialist conquest and become a great power. What was excluded was a period of peaceful, organic, development of capitalism.
It took the latter course, leading eventually to a war with the US. With its defeat in 1945, Japan developed within the reconstructed framework of capitalism, organized by the US. But after years of steady erosion, that framework has now been overturned by the Trump regime, never to return, and so all the old historical issues, which had seemingly been locked down, arise again.
It will not have escaped the attention of the Japanese ruling class, and its not inconsiderable militarist layers, that the agreement imposed on it by the US bears a striking resemblance to the “unequal treaties” inflicted on China in the latter part of the 19th century and the opening years of the 20th and that once again Japan is being confronted with the need to fight for its place in the world imperialist order.
Rumblings are already being heard. There is media commentary to the effect that Japan has abdicated financial sovereignty to the US.
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Trump hailed the agreement as a “new era in US-Japan trade relations.” It is that—and not only with Japan. The agreement contains within it the seeds of a new inter-imperialist war.
How fast those seeds take to germinate, and sprout will be revealed in the conflicts to come but they have definitely been planted in the fertile ground established by the US imperialist rampage.
5. White House seizes on killing of Charlie Kirk to legitimize fascism and suppress opposition
Early Friday morning, Utah Governor Spencer Cox and FBI Director Kash Patel announced the arrest of Tyler Robinson, the suspect in the killing of fascist operative Charlie Kirk.
The killing of Kirk has been seized upon by the Trump administration to justify an escalating campaign of repression against any criticism of the far right. This comes even as very little is known about the motives of the alleged shooter, and there are indications that he may be an extreme right-wing ideologue.
The most significant statement in the press conference came at the conclusion of Patel’s remarks, when, paying homage to Kirk, he declared: “Rest now, brother, we have the watch, and I’ll see you in Valhalla.”
Patel’s invocation of “Valhalla” was an explicit nod to mythology long appropriated by fascist movements. From Hitler’s embrace of Wagner to modern neo-Nazi groups like the Order of Nine Angles, Norse symbols—especially Valhalla, the “hall of the slain”—have been used to cast political violence and martyrdom in heroic, quasi-religious terms.
References to Valhalla have appeared in the manifestos of mass murderers in Christchurch, Buffalo and Utøya, where it was invoked to cloak atrocities in the language of racial purity and a mythical warrior afterlife.
That the FBI director would echo this tradition underscores the extent to which the rhetoric and symbols of fascism have been normalized within the state itself. Kirk, as the World Socialist Web Site noted yesterday, is being turned into the Horst Wessel of the MAGA movement, a martyr in the far-right crusade.
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In his Friday morning Fox News appearance, Trump insisted the shooter was driven by “left-wing politics.” The fascist president declared, “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. The radicals on the left are the problem.”
The White House is also using Kirk’s death to attempt to obliterate any distinction between church and state. On Friday, it released an official video featuring Kirk declaring: “Trust God and act obediently” and “that Jesus Christ was a real person, he lived a perfect life, he was crucified, died and rose on the third day and he is Lord and God of all.” The video concludes with chants of “USA” and the display of the official White House logo.
The corporate media and major sports leagues have joined in staging public tributes to Kirk—holding moments of silence at National Football League and Major League Baseball games—as part of a broader effort to normalize white supremacist politics as a legitimate component of official state ideology. On Friday, the Chicago Cubs flew the flag at half-staff and held a “moment of reflection.”
A similar ceremony was held at Thursday’s Packers-Commanders NFL football game in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Among those in attendance at Lambeau Field were NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, representatives of the corporate-financial oligarchy that bankrolls both professional sports and the far right.
Alongside the glorification of Kirk, a systematic campaign is underway to delegitimize and criminalize any opposition. In the media, he is presented as a heroic champion of “free speech,” while references to his fascistic and neo-Nazi views are subject to an unspoken ban. The result is the transformation of the airwaves into a propaganda platform for the far right.
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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth posted on social media Thursday that the Pentagon is “tracking” all social media posts from military and civilian Department of War personnel that “celebrate or mock the assassination” of the fascist Kirk.
The killing of Kirk is being exploited not only to sanitize the politics of the far right but to build a mythology of a violent “radical left” supposedly running rampant in America. In this narrative, the far right—though it controls the White House and Congress, dominates the Supreme Court and enjoys the backing of billionaires and the corporate media—is cast as a persecuted victim.
The reality is that the principal source of political violence in America for years has been the fascist right and those it has inspired.
Kirk himself was notorious for giving political legitimacy to such violence. In 2022, he made national headlines when he suggested on his podcast that a “patriot” should post bail for David DePape, the man who attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer.
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To portray the United States as plagued by “radical left” violence, while the fascist right continues to escalate its threats, is a grotesque inversion of reality. It is, however, essential for legitimizing the assault on democratic rights and the imposition of authoritarian rule.
6. Australian establishment uses Kirk assassination to attack left-wing opposition
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Charlie Kirk on Wednesday, leaders of Australia’s political and media establishment have rushed to eulogize the far-right agitator and to mourn his demise.
In the US, Kirk is being transformed into a martyr of the fascistic MAGA movement. US President Donald Trump is using the killing, the motives of which remain entirely unclear, to further normalize the extreme right within the political establishment and to demonize left-wing opposition.
Significantly, the same basic aims underlie the response in Australia. But whereas in the US this campaign is led by the openly fascistic Trump, who is attempting to overturn the Constitution and establish a dictatorship, in Australia it is being presided over by a Labor government.
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Not a single Labor leader has differentiated themselves from Kirk’s fascist politics or expressed a critical word. “I think the world is shocked by such an event and my heart goes out to Mr Kirk’s family and to all those who will be grieving today in the United States,” current Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese declared.
Albanese has not once expressed such sentiments in relation to a Palestinian killed by Israel in the offensive against Gaza that his government continues to support politically, diplomatically and materially.
In a radio interview yesterday, Albanese introduced a theme that has been taken up by the most right-wing sections of the press. Albanese warned of a “polarisation of politics,” which he claimed was fuelled by social media and “pushes people towards extremes, whether at the left or the right, and that’s not a good thing here in Australia.”
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The argument that political free speech is impermissible, because its exercise is equivalent to or could lead to violence is an argument for a dictatorship in which no opposition is allowed to be expressed.
In the reaction to Kirk’s death, several trends in official politics come together. The attempt to vilify and demonise mass opposition, especially to the genocide, goes hand in hand with the normalisation of far-right and fascistic politics. Both tendencies were represented by Kirk himself, who was both a supporter of Israel’s persecution of the Palestinians and an antisemite.
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The fact that it is a Labor government that is eulogising the fascist Kirk, while attacking left-wing opposition, underscores the reality that Trump is not an aberration. His fascistic program coincides with the agenda of militarism and austerity of the entire ruling elite, under conditions of a deep-going crisis of global capitalism.
7. European ruling class mourns Charlie Kirk, embraces far-right
The killing of Charlie Kirk has been used in Europe to strengthen and legitimize the far-right and criminalize left-wing opposition, including encouraging violent attacks. This revolting campaign is spearheaded by Europe’s far-right groups but is being facilitated by political tendencies and the media across the political spectrum.
It was launched in the European Parliament, where representatives of the far-right bloc the European Conservatives and Reformists demanded a minute’s silence, protesting loudly when this was denied on procedural grounds. The Europe of Sovereign Nations bloc, led by the neo-Nazi Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has reportedly nominated Kirk for the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought.
Leaders of Europe’s main far-right parties queued up to join in portraying the white supremacist, antisemite Kirk as an exemplar of free speech and democratic ideals, whose death was the result of a far-left campaign to denigrate nationalists and patriots all over the world as fascists and therefore supposedly inviting violence against them.
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In Britain, former prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party Boris Johnson said Kirk, who argued that Jews were engineering the mass replacement of whites, was “killed for saying things that used to be simple common sense. The world has a shining new martyr to free speech.”
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The intended outcome of Kirk’s beatification is on full display in the UK, where it coincides with a planned “Unite the Kingdom” march in London this weekend led by fascist provocateur Tommy Robinson. It follows a months-long effort in the press and the Houses of Parliament to elevate Britain’s far-right by championing anti-migrant protests outside asylum seeker accommodation and a campaign to hang St George’s and Union Jack flags along streets.
Robinson declared that his protest would be dedicated to the new fascist martyr Charlie Kirk. He claimed that after what had happened, “I’ve got a target on me”.
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Last year, the World Socialist Web Site described the ruling class’s “semantic inversion” of the word “antisemite” to mean anyone opposed to the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. That was the product of years of lies, witch-hunts, right-wing provocations and frame-up and codified in guidance like the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism foisted on universities and public bodies.
The same forces involved in this earlier campaign are now working to have “antifascist” defined as violent, intolerant extremist, and identifying someone as a fascist as “hate speech” directed against democratic exemplars of “free speech”.
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None of this would be possible without the collusion of social democratic and “liberal” publications and politicians.
In France, Le Monde published a solemn, heartfelt narration of the grief suffered by the MAGA movement and Donald Trump personally. Their “almost familial closeness partly explains the reaction of the president himself, who is not known for his displays of affection. On Thursday, with a hoarse, drawling voice, Donald Trump delivered a speech at the Pentagon on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks. Visibly moved, he paid tribute to the ‘American heroes’ who, on that now distant day, rushed to save the wounded in the collapsing buildings.
“It was impossible,” claimed the paper’s Piotr Smolar, “not to see the incredible overlap between these events and the assassination of Charlie Kirk”.
In Britain, the Guardian’s editors published a sermon against “division”, preaching softly, “In this perilous moment, the response to such hateful crimes should be to coalesce to stress non-violence and civic tolerance.”
Speaking for European social democracy, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer leapt online to share that, “My thoughts this evening are with the loved ones of Charlie Kirk. It is heartbreaking that a young family has been robbed of a father and a husband. We must all be free to debate openly and freely without fear—there can be no justification for political violence.”
The government of this champion of free and open debate has arrested well over 1,000 people in the last months for peaceful protests against genocide in Parliament Square and the proscription of Palestine Action under terrorism laws. Starmer’s repressive agenda is shared by all those supposedly weeping for democracy after Kirk’s death.
Workers and young people will see through this sham concern for free speech to the real ideological affinity between Kirk and his mourners which stands behind it.
The grotesque outpouring of sympathy in Europe will only widen the gulf between the ruling class and most of the population who are repulsed by Kirk’s ideas. They will feel a cold fury that Starmer and company have shed more tears for Kirk than they have for the millions of Palestinians being bombed, starved and shot out of existence.
8. Flanders Festival disinvites conductor Lahav Shani: the hypocritical outcry over “antisemitism”
The cancellation of the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra’s appearance at the Flanders Festival in Ghent, Belgium, under its designated chief conductor Lahav Shani has triggered a storm of protest in Germany that could not be more hypocritical and disingenuous.
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The Ghent festival management justified the cancellation of the concert planned for September 18 on the grounds that Shani is also chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO). “Lahav Shani has spoken out in favour of peace and reconciliation several times in the past,” they explained their decision, “but in light of his role as chief conductor of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, we are unable to provide sufficient clarity about his attitude toward the genocidal regime in Tel Aviv.” Therefore, in consultation with the Ghent City Council, an alliance of liberals, socialists, and greens, the festival “chose to refrain from collaboration with partners who have not distanced themselves unequivocally from that regime.”
One can view the festival management’s decision critically. Especially since Shani, as the festival organisers themselves explain, “has spoken out in favour of peace and reconciliation several times in the past.” In August, the 36-year-old conductor expressed his hope in a guest article for the Süddeutsche Zeitung “that very courageous people will soon come forward on both sides, people who think about the future and dare to take the difficult steps toward peace.” “All I know is that every life lost is one too many,” he added.
Shani has also conducted the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, founded by his mentor Daniel Barenboim, in which Jewish, Palestinian, and Arab musicians play together. His wife, Miri Saadon, is a clarinetist in the orchestra.
However, the claim that the festival management’s decision was antisemitic is a malicious slander. The festival management has explicitly stated that the decision had nothing to do with Shani’s personal views or even his Jewish identity, but exclusively with his role as chief conductor of the IPO. The orchestra, as an institution, has not clearly distanced itself from the government, “and in our view, genocide leaves no room for ambiguity,” said Jan Van den Bossche, the festival’s artistic director.
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The Israeli government and the Israeli army are committing crimes against humanity in Gaza that defy description. Even when it seems impossible to escalate further, they continue to intensify the terror.
With its attack on Gaza City, the Israeli army wants to cram 1.5 million people into an area that is only slightly more than twice the size of the Warsaw Ghetto, where about half a million people lived at its peak. And while 7 to 8 people lived crammed together in one room in multi-story buildings in the ghetto, in the Gaza Strip everyone is to be housed on the ground in tents without sanitary facilities. To add insult to mass murder, the Israeli government refers to this concentration camp as a “humanitarian zone.”
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The propaganda from the political establishment and the media is powerful, but it is not all-powerful. The crimes committed by the Israeli government in full view of the world public have reached such proportions that they are turning billions of people around the world against it. Even the hypocritical clamor about antisemitism cannot prevent this.
9. Philadelphia’s sellout teachers’ contract paves the way for mass school closures
The Philadelphia School District has revealed plans to close several underutilized and deteriorating school buildings, signaling a major shift in the city’s public education landscape.
SDP Superintendent Tony B. Watlington Sr. told reporters Monday that, while “there are no fixed decisions at this point… about which schools will close… we can surely say some will.” The school board will present proposals this fall and early next year.
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The announcement of school closures comes less than two weeks after the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) helped the district forcefully ratify a new contract for its 14,000 educators and school workers. The SDP is facing a massive $313 million deficit, while state lawmakers from both major parties remain over two months late in announcing plans to fund the state’s education system.
Contrary to claims by PFT President Arthur Steinberg, who described the deal as “historic,” the contract is a sellout that fails to meet the pressing demands of teachers struggling with stagnant wages and rising living costs. This contract helped the district impose austerity, setting the stage for damaging school closures that deepen the financial crisis.
The contract, sprung on workers after weeks in which the PFT claimed to be preparing for a strike, was a set-up against teachers from the start, done to clear the path for steep cuts to the school system. The same maneuver was used by the Chicago Teacher Union, which pushed through a similar “historic” contract only for the school district to announce huge cuts a short time later.
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Cities and municipalities throughout the United States are enacting cuts to social programs and spending.
Los Angeles faces a $1 billion deficit, with plans for thousands of job cuts, deep reductions in public works, and losses to school programs. The LA Unified School District will lose $82 million in federal funding for K–12 education, resulting in staff and program cuts. Chicago, with a $982 million deficit, is considering layoffs and service reductions across departments, including education. It has already adopted a “doomsday” budget in its transit system.
In both cities, teachers have faced or face contract battles sold out by their union leaders. In California, the Los Angeles teachers contract expired in June. The United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA) and California Teachers Association (CTA) have repeatedly delayed strike action and accepted inadequate, toothless demands in negotiations with LAUSD, despite mounting layoffs, benefit cuts and attacks on working conditions.
In Chicago, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) pushed through a sellout contract based on false claims of securing historic gains, while leaving teachers vulnerable to devastating layoffs and budget cuts.
10. Build rank-and-file committees to wage struggle against Macron and war—a reply to Mélenchon
The fall of the French government amid a historic budget crisis and a first mass protest organized on social media on September 10 have revealed the crisis of capitalist rule. As the NATO powers escalate spending on re-militarization and war hysteria against Russia, France and other European countries are teetering on the edge of state bankruptcy. The great question is how the working class can intervene to stop massive social attacks on the population and further escalation of the war.
The crisis is also exposing the mechanisms the political establishment uses to demobilize working class opposition—above all, in France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France (LFI) party. In his blog post on the September 10 protest, titled “1000 cuts open a breach,” Mélenchon asserts that issuing a few calls for the removal of France’s widely hated president, Emmanuel Macron, is all that needs to be done. A citizens’ revolution, he claims, will thereupon spontaneously unfold:
It is enough for us to let the situation ripen. Two governments have already fallen, proving the level of destabilization of the higher ups. With a good plan of action, we simply gave a push to get there. The result was totally out of proportion with the means we deployed. …
It is useless to tire oneself out trying to do more. [The higher-ups] are blinding themselves and thus showing themselves incapable to deal with the revolt that is coming. The citizens revolution ripening in people’s minds is closer to an elemental force of nature than to any sort of plot imagined by old bourgeois trembling in front of their televisions.This is a thoroughly irresponsible, indeed reactionary attempt to lull workers to sleep. An elemental explosion of mass political anger is approaching, but the working class must prepare itself for the revolutionary challenges this will pose. The bourgeois counterrevolution will fight ruthlessly, using not only the riot police, but the power of the banks and, above all, the demobilizing role of the union bureaucracies tied to LFI.
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The working class needs to build its own independent organizations of struggle, rank-and-file committees in workplaces, schools and working class neighborhoods, to take back control of its struggles from the bureaucracies. The crisis of capitalist rule in France and across Europe cannot be resolved by a “citizens revolution” unfolding at the ballot box inside France, as LFI proposes. Only a socialist revolution unfolding across Europe and internationally, expropriating the capitalist oligarchy, can prevent a collapse in living standards and further war escalation.
While Mélenchon again mocks the “supposed debt crisis” in his blog post, there is in reality a mortal crisis of capitalism in Europe. Sovereign debt is 114 percent of GDP in France, 150 percent in Italy, 104 percent in Spain, 102 percent in Britain. Germany’s plan to spend €1 trillion on re-militarization could boost its debt to 90 percent of GDP. Across Europe, countries are spending hundreds of billions of euros on servicing their debts to the banks, and are calling to spend hundreds of billions on boosting their armed forces to prepare for war with Russia.
In a powerful display of determination, striking Boeing defense workers in St. Louis voted down a third tentative agreement in their six-week struggle. More than 3,200 members of the International Association of Machinists (IAM) District 837 rejected the deal in a snap vote on Friday, orchestrated by the union bureaucracy in an effort to shut down the strike.
The outcome is a sign of mounting opposition across the American working class. It follows recent walkouts at GE Aerospace, Libbey Glass and among nurses in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Workers are being driven into struggle by intolerable living and working conditions, the product of the vast social inequality enforced by the corporate and financial oligarchy.
For Boeing workers, the critical next step is to take the initiative out of the hands of the sellout union apparatus and prepare for a broader mobilization, uniting Boeing’s entire workforce in St. Louis, the Seattle area, and throughout the aerospace industry as a whole.
The stakes in this fight are immense. The St. Louis defense plants produce fighter jets and missiles for the US military and for export to Washington’s allies. Workers are therefore in direct conflict not only with Boeing but with the entire capitalist political system. With President Donald Trump openly threatening to deploy the National Guard into US cities, the same weaponry now used on the battlefields of Gaza, Ukraine and beyond is being prepared for use against the American working class.
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Boeing has already begun hiring permanent replacement workers, a naked act of strikebreaking. While workers have not been cowed, management’s arrogance rests on its confidence in the collaboration of the IAM bureaucracy. From the start, union officials opposed the strike, fearing any disruption to their comfortable ties with the company and the political establishment.
But workers forced the strike with overwhelming rejections of the company’s offers and authorization votes. Their defiance follows last year’s semi-rebellion by over 30,000 Boeing civilian workers in the Seattle area, who carried out a monthlong strike despite IAM opposition.
Since the walkout began, the IAM has effectively abandoned Boeing defense workers. With nearly $300 million in net assets and $200 million in annual expenditures, most of which is consumed by six-figure salaries for union executives, the IAM has left strikers to scrape by on just $200 a week in strike pay. The national leadership has issued only a handful of statements, nothing in response to Boeing’s open threats to replace the workforce and has done nothing to mobilize the rest of the union’s 500,000 members.
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Workers face ruthless opponents. Boeing’s management has already demonstrated its criminality, responsible for hundreds of deaths in crashes of its commercial airliners due to its deliberate flouting of safety rules. On Thursday, the Federal Aviation Administration announced that Boeing faces a $3.3 million fine after uncovering hundreds of quality violations at its 737 factory in Renton, Washington, and at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kansas. The FAA reported that Boeing had presented two unairworthy aircraft for certification and violated its own internal safety regulations.
Boeing also enjoys the support of Wall Street, which has backed its efforts to make workers shoulder the cost of the company’s crisis. While Boeing’s stock price dipped 2 percent on Thursday following reports of further delays to its 777X aircraft, markets appear to have ignored Friday’s announcement of the contract rejection.
That backing includes the full weight of the Pentagon and the White House. Last August, IAM leaders themselves called for Trump to intervene in the strike, cynically presenting this as being in the interests of workers. In reality, such an “intervention” would take the same form as Trump’s militarized crackdowns in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles: repression of workers.
The danger of government action is heightened by Trump’s cultivation of support from the union bureaucracy itself. The UAW and the Teamsters, both of which back Trump, are seeking to integrate themselves ever more closely into his administration.
UAW President Shawn Fain, who has vocally supported ramping up war production to levels unseen since World War II, declared in a livestream on Thursday that the union was moving towards a tentative agreement to shut down the GE Aerospace strike. In other words, a parallel betrayal is being prepared.
12. University of Minnesota service workers continue strike despite University and police intimidation
On Wednesday, University of Minnesota (UMN) police, along with Hennepin County deputies, detained and handcuffed 12 striking UMN workers outside Pioneer Hall, citing them for “gross-misdemeanor interference with public property.”
During the incident, police officers became violent with striking service workers, shoving one elderly worker to the ground. Officers also blocked public sidewalks with barricades to prevent protesters—including both striking UMN service workers and students who had joined them—from passing through.
Teamsters Local 320, of which the striking workers are members, responded the same day by filing an unfair labor practice (ULP) charge, calling it an act of “coordinated intimidation.”
The striking UMN service workers are engaged in their first system-wide strike since the 1970s. The strike follows the overwhelming 82 percent rejection of the University’s “last, best, and final” offer, which included raises of just 2 to 3 percent and a $1,000 bonus—an offer that effectively cuts real wages. Meanwhile, the UMN administration has already spent more than one million dollars on out-of-state scabs while sitting on a $6.1 billion endowment.
The escalation by the University and the state is a clear violation of democratic rights. It reflects growing concerns within the ruling class over the prospect of working-class opposition spreading among university students and developing into a struggle that will ultimately confront the Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (the local Democratic Party in Minnesota) and the capitalist system itself.
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The escalation by the University and the state also comes amid a broader attack on democratic rights. Just this month, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a landmark case, Homeland Security v . López, granting federal officers immunity for racial profiling. This legal cover for discrimination, originally intended for ICE raids, is now being used to menace immigrant campus workers.
Notably, UMN Regents have remained silent on both the ongoing raids and the court ruling. Ominously, a recent University HR memo reminded staff of their “federal compliance obligations.” In other words, the official position of the Regents is that workers must comply with the demands of the Trump administration.
Despite this, a University of Minnesota press release absurdly claimed that picketers “threatened to report replacement workers to ICE” and blocked medical-center deliveries.
The Teamsters responded, noting in their Local 320 reply that their workforce is majority immigrant and that no evidence was produced for these claims. They called the University’s press release a classic “divide-and-rule” tactic.
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There is support for the striking workers among both workers and students across the city. Farm Aid 40, a music festival started by Willie Nelson, Neil Young and John Mellencamp, is aimed at building support for U.S. farmers. It was scheduled to take place at UMN on September 20, but organizers and musicians have indicated they will cancel or move the event if pickets remain, stating openly that artists, stagehands and organizers refuse to cross the picket line.
Eric, a sophomore at the University who joined the pickets in support of the strike, told the World Socialist Web Site, “I support them. They’re putting some stress on the University. I hope that the University is more willing to negotiate, but in this country and concerning the unions, there won’t be any support from the administration. Speaking on the police intimidation, Eric continued, “I mean, the MPD (Minneapolis Police Department) has been doing some screwed up stuff to the workers. They were actually attacking them.
“You know, the University raised our tuition this semester and it all went to the administration and maybe some expansion, I’m not sure. You’re going to see the administration do the same thing companies try to do—get as much money as possible and not give it to the people who actually do the work. The president of the University—who makes over a million dollars a year—is only out to benefit herself.”
13. How can the genocide in Gaza be stopped?
This Statement by the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (the Socialist Equality Party in Germany) will be distributed at a rally planned to take place this weekend in front of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.
14. Sri Lankan journalists visit Israel amid ongoing Gaza genocide
The recent visit to Israel by a group of 16 Sri Lankan journalists, including two from the state-owned Rupavahini Corporation, amid the ongoing genocide in Gaza, is a further demonstration of the pro-Israel line of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government.
Citing Sri Lanka’s ambassador to Israel Nimal Bandara, Newswire reported on September 5 that a group of Sri Lankan journalists had arrived in Israel on a “five-day study program aimed at providing foreign media and policymakers with a clear understanding of the country’s current situation.” Bandara stated that the visit was organized by the Israeli Embassy in New Delhi.
The visit has nothing to do with providing a “clear understanding” of the genocide being carried out by the Israeli military in Gaza, but is to cover up Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. The Israeli regime, which has barred international journalists from Gaza and is responsible for killing at least 248 journalists, has no intention of letting the Sri Lankan delegation witness its barbaric operations.
“Our journalists will also observe humanitarian aid operations in the Gaza Strip, which is an important part of understanding Israel’s realities on the ground,” the ambassador stated. These carefully managed photo ops will not include scenes of starving children clinging to life or the gunning down of Palestinians lining up to get limited aid.
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News of the visit has sparked outrage in Sri Lanka on social media. Roe De Mel wrote on Facebook: “May the brain washing propaganda begin;” and Mohammed Arhsad commented: “Best destination to learn crimes and murder.” Hassan Mhn wrote: “It is noteworthy that our media, which is now going to promote Israel, has never before worked so closely with Israel as any government.”
There is widespread concern and opposition to Israel’s ongoing crimes. The Israeli military continue their deadly strikes, targeting homes and aid seekers alike. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, the death toll has surpassed 64,000, one-third of whom are children. Israel continues to use mass starvation as a weapon of war, with the number of dead reaching 313 including 119 children. According to the UN’s deputy humanitarian chief, over 130,000 children under the age of five are at acute risk of malnutrition.
As Israel extends its military operations, one million people are being forced out of Gaza City, as part of its plans for the complete occupation of Gaza, fully backed by US imperialism. The Israeli airstrike targeting Hamas negotiators in Qatar has exposed the sham of US-Israeli posturing on ceasefire negotiations.
When the issue was raised in the Sri Lankan parliament, opposition Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MPs questioned the participation of journalists from the state-owned Rupavahini in the delegation. The SJB, an openly pro-US party, has made very mild criticisms of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, in a bid to exploit public anger over the war for political gain.
The government sought to dismiss the comments, insisting the trip was private. House Leader Bimal Ratnayake, who is also co-chairman of the Sri Lanka Committee for Solidarity with Palestine, expressed some concern about photos posted by the Israeli ambassador on Facebook, strongly suggesting the government’s involvement in organizing the visit.
However, Media Minister Nalinda Jayatissa told a press briefing later: “The government will not bear any responsibility. Anyone is free to go to Israel; there is no ban on visiting. We cannot obstruct this.”
However, if the JVP/NPP government has no involvement, why is its ambassador making statements justifying the visit and hosting dinner for the journalists and posing for photographs with them?
Before taking power last year, the JVP postured in the election campaigns as a critic of Israel’s crimes. Once in office, it abruptly shifted to align with the US-Israel genocidal war in Gaza and broader Middle East strategy. Apart from empty calls for a “ceasefire,” the JVP/NPP has remained silent on the unfolding disaster in Gaza, underscoring its tacit support.
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The government has no desire to antagonize or upset its close ally in Tel Aviv. Instead it targets those who publicly criticize Israel.
Mohamed Rifai Mohamed Suhail, 21, was arbitrary arrested last October and detained for nine months under draconian Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) alleging that he had posted an Instagram photo showing the Israeli flag being trampled. Another youth, Mohammed Rusdi, was arrested on March 22 and detained under the PTA for allegedly pasting stickers condemning Israel’s attacks on Gaza. He was only granted bail two weeks later on April 7.
The drive to war has objective roots. Behind the increasingly aggressive posturing of the imperialist powers lies a toxic mix of political and geostrategic ambitions combined with a profound internal crisis. Just as in the 1930s, the ruling class is responding to the deep crisis of the capitalist system, intensifying great-power rivalries, and growing popular opposition by turning to militarism, fascism, and war.
Above all, German imperialism is re-emerging, eighty years after the end of the Second World War, with its old militaristic and murderous ambitions of acting as an independent great power. In his policy statement ahead of the last NATO summit—where defense spending was raised from 2 to 5 percent of GDP—Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU) emphasized that Germany’s militarization was not driven by pressure from Trump, but by “our own conviction.” Germany, Merz declared, would “make the Bundeswehr the strongest conventional army in Europe,” in line with its “size, economic strength, and geographic position.”
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Following the reintroduction of the draft and the creation of a National Security Council in August, outgoing Army Inspector Alfons Mais has called for a massive expansion of personnel to make the Bundeswehr “fit for war.” Only with significantly more troops, he argued, could Germany meet NATO’s future requirements and be ready for a possible confrontation with Russia.
According to an internal document obtained by Reuters, Mais is demanding around 100,000 additional active soldiers. By 2029 alone, some 45,000 new recruits are to be added. By 2035, another 45,000 are to follow, to meet the targets set at the NATO summit in The Hague this June while also building “reserves for a war of attrition.” At least 10,000 of the additional troops would be assigned to territorial defense.
With these plans, the German Army is openly acknowledging it is preparing for a large-scale, protracted war against Russia. While austerity measures and social cuts are being rammed through at home, the recruitment of hundreds of thousands of young people and working-class youth for new imperialist slaughter is being mapped out.
16. United States: Mexican immigrant killed by ICE agent during raid in Chicago suburb
Silverio Villegas González, a 42-year-old Mexican immigrant and father of three, was shot and killed by an ICE officer in Franklin Park, Illinois, late on Wednesday afternoon.
According to authorities, González was initially stopped by ICE agents who claimed that his vehicle matched the description of one purportedly involved in a prior immigration-related investigation.
Friends and family contested this account, emphasizing that González’s only offense was a minor traffic infraction—an expired license plate sticker—in the quiet suburb just west of Chicago.
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Eyewitness accounts taken down and reported by WBEZ Chicago said events escalated rapidly after ICE agents approached González, whose fear and panic were clearly visible to everyone nearby.
The WBEZ quoted several people who were on the scene. Maria Martinez, a neighbor, told reporters, “He was just sitting in his car when two men came up out of nowhere, shouting at him in English. Silverio looked scared—he didn’t understand everything they were saying. We heard them yelling, then, all of a sudden, I heard gunshots.”
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The WBEZ account describes confusion and fear among local residents, many of whom did not realize the men in plain clothes were federal agents until after the incident. María Santiago, who resides across the street, said: “Nobody knew they were ICE. They didn’t identify themselves clearly. It looked like a robbery at first, but then they started dragging Silverio away and blocking anyone from getting close.”
As in every act of police brutality that workers are all too familiar with in American cities, ICE released a statement Thursday morning, claiming González “failed to comply with lawful orders” and “acted in a manner that posed a threat to officers.”
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A next-door neighbor, Jorge Hernández, described Silverio as “a quiet man, a hard worker. He didn’t know what to do when those agents came for him. He was scared for his life, and now he’s gone.”
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Meanwhile, as of September 2025, at least 14 immigrants have died while in ICE custody this year. This is on track to be one of the deadliest in ICE’s history. By comparison, police killings in the US remain at staggering levels, with over 1,100 deaths per year reported by the Mapping Police Violence project, the majority of whom are working-class, poor and people of color.
17. Banksy’s Royal Courts of Justice mural destroyed
Graffiti artist Banksy this week produced a powerful image of the repressive actions and legislation of the British state. The speed with which officials moved to cover and then remove his mural has confirmed its accuracy.
The mural appeared on Monday morning on a wall of Queen’s Building, Carey Street, London. This is in the back part of the Royal Courts of Justice (RCJ) complex, the home of the High Court and the Courts of Appeal. It showed an unarmed protester lying on the ground. A judge, in black gown and white wig, stands over him, beating him with a gavel. The protester’s right hand is empty. His left holds a blood-spattered placard.
Banksy issued no statement about the work, simply posting pictures and location to Instagram, his usual method of establishing his authorship.
No statement was necessary. The mural appeared two days after the arrest of more than 850 people in Parliament Square in London, the latest mass arrests against opponents of the genocide in Gaza.
These are among the almost 1,500 arrests made under the Terrorism Act (2000), following the proscription in July by the Starmer government of protest group Palestine Action (PA) as a terrorist organization. Leading members of PA and the legal rights group Defend Our Juries (DOJ) have been targeted in police raids.
Membership or encouragement of support for a proscribed group carries a maximum sentence of 14 years. Protesting this assault on democratic rights is itself being treated within the remit of the repressive legislation. The 857 arrested Saturday was because they held a placard containing seven words: “I oppose genocide, I support Palestine Action.” Under the Terrorism Act, even wearing clothing or carrying items indicating support of a proscribed group means they could incur a fine of £5,000 or a six-month sentence.
Equating peaceful protest against the genocide in Gaza with terrorism is being used to criminalize opposition to brutal war crimes that are supported by the British ruling class. It is a further step into police state forms of rule that the government has tried to gloss with a veneer of legality. Banksy’s sharp image reveals the reality of such legalistic methods of the state.
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The Metropolitan Police said a complaint of criminal damage had been made and its inquiries were ongoing, leading to speculation about whether it would see Banksy in court. The prime question, if one were to believe the press, was whether it would finally publicly reveal the anonymous street artist’s real identity.
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Banksy has over recent decades become a “collectable” artist, with dealers finding ways of removing murals from buildings and making them highly lucrative sellable commodities. Not this time. There was no way anyone in ruling circles was allowing his latest work to exist, so acute was it in denouncing the moves to police state forms of rule and the accompanying evisceration of democratic rights.
Banksy’s work has always shown social conscience and awareness, including opposing the repression of the Palestinians and the filthy treatment of refugees and asylum seekers. He directed a 2009 documentary called Exit through the Gift Shop and has been explicit in identifying capitalism as the enemy.
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A zoomed image of the mural can also be viewed on the Banksy web site here.
18. United Kingdom: Trades Union Congress mounts rescue operation for right-wing Starmer government
This year’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) conference in Brighton September 7–10, was dominated by warnings that Labour’s anti-immigrant and pro-business agenda risked handing power to Nigel Farage’s far-right Reform UK.
The media presented this performance politics as a shot across the bows of the Starmer government, with the union bureaucracy urging fidelity to the working class. This was echoed by the portrayal by Britain’s pseudo-left groups of the trade unions as genuine opponents of Starmer.
Trade union bureaucrats—drawing six-figure salaries and inhabiting a different social stratum from the six million workers they claim to represent—in fact delivered their pro-worker platitudes to try and rescue the Labour government from itself and justify their continued alliance with it.
Their problem was that the government they had helped into office last year as a supposed “friend of workers” has already proven to be a right-wing vehicle for policies of austerity and war. To neutralize mounting working-class opposition from the left, the union bureaucracy therefore attempted to present Starmer’s government as the only alternative to the anti-immigrant poison of Farage that could still be pressurized into protecting workers from the onslaught of the employers.
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For the last two years the union bureaucracy has done nothing to oppose the Gaza genocide, ensuring the supply of UK weapons to Israel increased under Starmer —including components for F-35 fighter planes which have reigned death on Gaza. And nothing will be changed in this score.
Genuine opposition to the assault on democratic rights, the deepening social crisis, and Labour’s complicity in imperialist wars cannot be mounted through the corridors of the TUC and under the leadership of its affiliated trade unions. The urgent task for the working class is to build independent rank-and-file committees capable of mobilizing workers across workplaces and communities, uniting these struggles into a conscious fight against the capitalist system itself. Only through the self-organization of the working class, linking the fight for immediate demands to the broader struggle for socialism, can a path of genuine struggle be opened.
19. Canada: Over 10,000 Ontario community college workers strike over precarious employment and low pay
More than 10,000 full-time support workers at 24 community colleges across Ontario launched strike action on Thursday, September 11, in pursuit of improved wages and benefits, and most crucially amid a brutal cost-cutting drive, job security provisions.
The workers, members of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), provide a full gamut of services in the provincial college network, acting as library technologists, student advisers and co-op placement coordinators, administrative staff, job counsellors, IT specialists, tradespeople, custodians and food service workers.
The strike is the latest indication of mounting working class opposition across Canada to the ruling class’ imposition of savage austerity and the gutting of workers’ rights to pay for war and further swell the financial oligarchy’s vast wealth. Contradicting the bogus claims of the mainstream media, establishment parties, and the trade union bureaucracy of a “Team Canada” united across all social classes in the ongoing trade war with the United States, the college workers’ strike underscores yet again that Canada, like every country, is riven by irreconcilable class conflict under conditions of a deepening global capitalist crisis.
The strike by the over 10,000 support staff comes less than a month after 10,500 Air Canada flight attendants defied a back-to-work order from Mark Carney’s federal Liberal government before having their courageous struggle for better wages and an end to unpaid labor sabotaged by the Canadian Union of Public Employees’ (CUPE) bureaucracy. It coincides with ongoing rotating walkouts by over 30,000 government workers in British Columbia, who are fighting for a new contract against a New Democratic Party (NDP) government that is just as determined to impose savage cost-cutting as Doug Ford’s Tories in Ontario.
Classes and most labs for the more than 500,000 full- and part-time students enrolled in the provincial community college system are currently proceeding without significant interruption. This is thanks above all to the recent sellout of the contract fight of the 17,000 Ontario college faculty, who are also members of OPSEU. The union sat on an overwhelming strike mandate delivered by college lecturers last year before sending their contract to binding arbitration in January, thereby blocking the possibility of a joint struggle involving all college workers. A contract that failed to address many of the membership’s grievances around looming layoffs, precarious gig economy working conditions and low pay was eventually imposed, the union having surrendered the workers’ right to strike or even vote on their terms of employment.
OPSEU’s betrayal has created the conditions for college management to threaten full- and part-time professors, instructors, librarians and other part-time education workers with disciplinary action if they refuse to cross picket lines and continue classes during the support workers’ strike.
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The budgetary crisis in Ontario’s college system, like those facing all levels of education across the country, has been deliberately created through decades of underfunding by successive governments. In order to fund the colleges to the standards of other provinces, it is estimated that the disbursements from the provincial Conservative government would have to be more than doubled. The Ford government, however, has refused to meet this country-wide standard and has insisted, without any credibility, that it has no hand in the CEC’s negotiations with OPSEU, even as it calls for “more cost-cutting efficiencies.”
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For community college workers to defeat the brutal slashing of jobs and the gutting of student curriculum, a militant political struggle must be waged against the provincial government. But despite popular support for the community college system in Ontario, the union apparatus is determined to keep workers isolated on their picket lines even as their own members in the college faculties are instructed to bow to management demands to keep the classrooms open and the union bureaucrats give up job security and protection against campus closures at the “bargaining table.”
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The bureaucracy’s hostility to organizing workers in an unrelenting, mass mobilization against big business and their representatives in government flows from their corporatist ties with the state and big business that are the source of the union officials’ privileges. For them, all the jumps and traps and hurdles put up by the labyrinth-like “collective bargaining” system must be defended, because it is this system that secures union bureaucrats their well-paid salaries and de-fangs the working class of its true power.
The key lesson that striking college support staff and all workers must draw is that they must establish rank-and-file committees in every school and workplace to advance their interests in opposition to the entire stultifying union apparatus and the rapacious demands of the ruling class. The widespread anger and hostility to the betrayals of the union bureaucrats in dispute after dispute must find organized expression so that workers are capable of independently resisting and countermanding the bureaucrats when they attempt to enforce a sellout. This can only take place through the fight for a socialist program that places the interests of the workers above the demands of the corporate elite for higher profits, austerity and imperialist war.
Zorya Serebryakova as a young woman
The last three decades of Zorya’s life coincided with yet another wave of political and ideological reaction that followed the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union. It is to her great credit that, throughout this period, she remained deeply committed to restoring the historical truth about the Opposition and, in particular, Leon Trotsky and her father, Leonid Serebryakov. When Vadim Rogovin began publishing his history of the Opposition in Russian in the 1990s, she endorsed his work and participated in meetings organized by the International Committee of the Fourth International.
In 2010, already in her late 80s, she appeared on Russian national television at a popular show called “The Court of Time” to debate Leon Trotsky. In a minority of one, Zorya ardently defended the co-leader of the revolution and founder of the Red Army against the anticommunist smears of the other talk show guests. She also wrote articles on historical subjects, insisting that archival evidence proved that Joseph Stalin had been working for the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana, before 1917. She gave many interviews to historians and outlets, in Russia and abroad, with the last one dating from when she was already well into her late 90s. In a climate shaped by the systematic rehabilitation of Joseph Stalin and his crimes, on the one hand, and anticommunism, on the other, her unwavering defense of historical truth required tremendous courage and tenacity.
21. Bolsonaro sentenced to 27 years for Brazil coup attempt
On Thursday, former President Jair Bolsonaro was sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison for the fascist coup attempt that culminated in the January 8, 2023 insurrection in Brasília.
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The conviction of the former president and members of the military high command, including three four-star generals and a fleet admiral, is a historic event in Brazil. In a country that lived through two decades under brutal military dictatorship, from 1964 to 1985, this is the first time that generals sat in the defendant’s dock and that crimes against democracy were punished.
But this is not an event of merely national dimensions. The fascist offensive in Brazil is deeply linked to similar political processes developing in all parts of the world – from Latin America to Europe, but above all, in the United States.
The January 8, 2023 coup attempt in Brasília was a direct and inseparable continuation of the coup attempt led by Donald Trump on January 6, 2021 at Washington’s Capitol.
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Trump’s fascist insurrection at the Capitol, defined by the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) as a watershed event in international politics, served as a political model for the attempt by Bolsonaro and his allies to set in motion a totalitarian project of power.
On January 10, 2021, in an article titled “Bolsonaro endorses Trump coup, threatens to do same in Brazil’s 2022 election,” the WSWS wrote: “[Bolsonaro] has already announced his intention to use the same lies about electoral fraud in Brazil to mobilize his supporters in a bid to remain in power, whatever the results of the 2022 presidential elections.”
Reporting the presence of Eduardo Bolsonaro, the former president’s son, in Washington during the January 6, 2021 events, the WSWS categorically concluded: “Eduardo did not go to the United States as a tourist. He was effectively summoned as an international observer of Trump’s coup on behalf of Brazilian fascists.”
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After imposing 50 percent tariffs, openly presented as a means of forcing the suppression of the proceedings against Bolsonaro, the Trump administration is doubling down on its criminal attacks against Brazil following the trial’s conclusion.
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declared that political intervention against Brazil “is a priority for the administration and the president is unafraid to use the economic might, the military might of the United States of America to protect free speech around the world.”
The following day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded to Bolsonaro’s conviction by declaring on X that “The United States will respond accordingly to this witch hunt.”
More profoundly, the events during the two years that separate the fascist insurrection in Washington from its reenactment in Brasília demonstrate conclusively that the worldwide collapse of bourgeois democracy is an interconnected process. The swift advance of Trump’s dictatorial project makes explicit, furthermore, that it is only intensifying.
22. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Australia:Woodside oil and gas production workers in Western Australia begin industrial action
DHL Express workers at Brisbane Airport locked out for wearing union badges
Repco warehouse workers in Queensland strike for better pay
Southern Downs council workers strike over pay and conditions
Queensland public sector trades workers continue action for shorter work week
South Australian firefighters demand better pay and conditions
South Australia public sector nurses and midwives walk out for higher pay
MSS Security guards at Casey Hospital, Melbourne strike for wage rise
Fonterra dairy processing workers in Victoria still striking
CDC bus drivers in Victoria strike for improved pay
Tasmanian paramedics ban expansions of work responsibilities
Bangladesh:
Alif Casual Wear factory workers protest unpaid wages
Government threatens striking electricity workers
Hong Kong:
Coca-Cola workers strike over sacking of colleague
India:
Assam public sector health workers strike for permanent jobs
Vijayawada taxi drivers protest Andhra Pradesh government’s broken promises
Tamil Nadu: Talema Electronics factory workers hold on-site protest against terminations
South Korea:
Hyundai Heavy Industries shipbuilding workers continue industrial action
Sri Lanka:
School Development Officers demand direct recruitment
23. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk and Leon Trotsky
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.
