Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: September 22-28
- 25 years ago:
US and Britain orchestrate regime change in Yugoslavia’s election
50 years ago:
Second assassination attempt on US President Gerald Ford in three weeks
75 years ago:
US forces recapture Seoul during Korean War
100 years ago:
Fascist Hindu RSS founded in India
2. The New York Times intervenes to defend discredited UAW President Shawn Fain
The United Auto Workers bureaucracy is facing an unprecedented crisis. Rank-and-file opposition is growing against its collusion with the corporate attack on jobs and conditions and against UAW President Shawn Fain’s embrace of Trump’s trade war measures and refusal to organize resistance to dictatorship.
Three years ago, Fain was hailed by the corporate media, the Biden administration, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and other pseudo-left organizations for supposedly storming UAW headquarters and driving out the old, corrupt guard. But his record in office have been a string of unbroken betrayals. Among autoworkers, Fain is spoken about with scorn and anger.
This outcome confirmed the warnings of Mack Trucks worker Will Lehman, who ran as a socialist candidate for UAW president in 2022 on a program of abolishing the union apparatus and transferring power to the shop floor through rank-and-file committees controlled by workers themselves. Lehman won nearly 5,000 votes and would have won far more if the bureaucracy had not suppressed turnout.
The crisis of the Fain administration creates the potential for a vast and rapid realignment in the working class. Support will grow for a rank-and-file rebellion to destroy the corrupt pro-management bureaucrats, coupled with a fight against inequality, exploitation and fascist dictatorship.
This terrifies the ruling class, and it is why the New York Times, the mouthpiece of the Democratic Party, has chosen to intervene. On September 15, it published an article, titled “Shawn Fain, Who Pledged to Reform U.A.W., Faces Internal Dissent.”
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In its presentation of “internal dissent,” the newspaper confines itself entirely to a campaign mounted by former Fain supporters to discipline or remove him from office, led by Secretary Treasurer Margaret Mock, Vice President Richard Boyer and loyal oppositionist Brian Keller.
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The Times reassures its readership that opposition to Fain is limited to secondary questions and personal friction:
The dissident workers’ main complaints about Mr. Fain are rooted in internal union matters like budgets and his treatment of other union officials, rather than in grand philosophical disagreements about labor and political issues.
Those behind this campaign are not “workers,” but bureaucrats. Just as the Times falsely portrays Fain as the authentic voice of workers, so it tries to present his bureaucratic opponents as the voice of opposition from the rank-and-file. In so doing, it is preparing the grounds to present Fain’s replacements as the next great union “reform” group, should that become necessary.
Significantly, the Times did not cite a single rank-and-file worker on their views of Fain. Nor did it mention Will Lehman, whose program of rebellion against the apparatus the Times is determined to block from gaining influence.
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Fain owes his position primarily to support from the government, not workers. He was elected in a sham vote with only 9 percent turnout—with more ballots marked “undeliverable” than actually cast. Lehman filed legal challenges against the sham vote, but both union monitor Neil Barofsky and the Department of Labor have stonewalled these efforts.
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Neither the maneuvering of Fain nor the dishonesty of the Times can stop the coming eruption of mass opposition to inequality, dictatorship and war. The task is building rank-and-file committees to break through the bureaucratic bottleneck and consciously organize an industrial and political counter-offensive to end the threat of dictatorship, expropriate the oligarchy, and reorganize society to meet social needs, not corporate profit.
3. Perspective: The dirty secret of America under Trump: 1 in 5 children goes hungry
Earlier this month, US President Trump boasted in an interview with Fox News that, under his leadership, America had the “best economy we’ve ever had.” Any worker watching the interview would have wondered what America the president was talking about.
But Trump quickly explained what he meant. “We have the best stock market we’ve ever had.” And that is true. The stock market, and the wealth of the financial elite that owns most financial assets, keeps hitting records. The NASDAQ has surged 27 percent in a single month. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made $100 billion in a single day. NVIDIA, whose chips power the AI boom driving layoffs throughout the country, has seen its stock price increase by 50 percent, mirroring the dizzying heights of the dot-com boom a quarter-century ago.
Trump never ceases to boast about the fortunes created for the financial oligarchy. Left unsaid is that these fortunes are predicated on the impoverishment and ever greater exploitation of the workers of the United States and the world.
In an indication of what the ruling class is planning and its implications, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Saturday announced the “termination of future Household Food Security Reports,” which have been released every year for 30 years to document the state of hunger in the country.
The office of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins declared that the USDA’s reports—considered by researchers the gold standard for measuring hunger in America—“do nothing more than fear monger.” They are, in her words, “liberal fodder.”
Rollins asserted, “Trends in the prevalence of food insecurity have remained virtually unchanged.”
But this is simply a lie. Last year’s report showed that in 2023, 19 percent of America’s children were classified as “food insecure,” meaning they lived in households that “had difficulty at some time during the year providing enough food for all their members because of a lack of resources.” In simple language, nearly one in five of America’s children were hungry.
Last year’s report showed a sharp increase in hunger from 2021, when 13 percent of America’s children were classified as food insecure.
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The Labor Department’s monthly jobs figures have shown a marked trend downward over the course of the year, and, for the first time since the 2020 recession, the US economy actually lost jobs in June. The trend is driven by mass layoffs throughout the economy.
The current spate of layoffs is targeting the white-collar workforce, particularly in the technology sector, as companies implement AI tools to increase productivity, and, in turn, slash their workforces. In September alone, XAI, Rivian, Oracle and Salesforce announced hundreds of layoffs despite these companies’ surging share values. Amid these layoffs, Newsweek commented, “It’s the Worst Time to Be a College Graduate in Years.”
But analysts warn that while the white-collar workforce has been targeted first, often because their jobs are easier to automate using AI tools, AI-driven automation will lead to hundreds of thousands of layoffs among the blue-collar workforce in the coming months and years.
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The combination of soaring prices, stagnating wages and declining job prospects are driving a surge in poverty across the US. Detroit, hailed as undergoing an economic turnaround, saw its poverty rate increase to 34.5 percent last year, the highest level since 2007. A report published by Columbia University found that one in four New Yorkers could not afford food and housing, and that the poverty rate had increased by seven percentage points in just two years.
But at the other pole of society, things have never been better. The Trump administration has been a bonanza for America’s oligarchy.
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In 1975, the top 1 percent of income earners received 10 percent of the national income. Today, they take in over 20 percent. And the share of national income earned by the bottom 50 percent has collapsed—from 20 percent in 1975 to just 13 percent today, according to figures from the inequality researcher Gabriel Zucman.
he vast wealth of the financial elite was put on display last week when US President Donald Trump, flanked by billionaires, including Rupert Murdoch and Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman, alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, traveled to the UK’s Windsor Castle to attend a banquet as the guests of the British monarchy.
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The White House is seeking to cover up the prevalence of hunger in America because it knows its policies will lead to a vast rise in all forms of social misery. Reducing the health, well-being and longevity of the American population is not a byproduct of Trump’s policies; it is the goal.
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The deepening economic and social crisis will lead workers into struggle. As the Socialist Equality Party explained in its statement published Friday, “Trump’s Fascist Conspiracy and How to Fight It: A Socialist Strategy:”
This movement, led by the working class, requires a program that accurately reflects socio-economic realities and corresponds to the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population. The capitalist oligarchy has declared war on the working class. The necessary response is the declaration of war by the working class on capitalism which must result in the socialist reorganization of society.
4. Extraordinary Fed meeting highlights developing US financial crisis
Last week’s meeting of the US Federal Reserve was one of the most extraordinary since the central bank was founded in 1913, reflecting the developing crisis in the financial system over which it presides.
Its unprecedented character arose from the strenuous and ongoing efforts by President Trump, using every means at his disposal, to take direct control of the Fed’s governing body as he seeks to impose major cuts in interest rates. This is in order, among other things, to reduce the escalating interest bill on the US government debt of $37 trillion.
On the eve of the meeting, Stephen Miran, Trump’s chief economic adviser, was sworn in as a member of the Fed’s seven-member Board of Governors after his Senate confirmation was rushed through so he could take part in the meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee.
His appointment, which was made possible by the resignation of Fed governor Adriana Kugler before the expiration of her term next January, was a first. Miran did not resign from his position as chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, but merely took a leave of absence. Never before has someone still attached to the administration sat on the Fed’s governing body—a major breach in its so-called independence.
Also, on eve of the meeting an appeals court ruled, in a 2-1 decision, to support a lower court ruling against Trump’s attempt to have Fed governor Lisa Cook removed for “cause” over claims that she had listed two properties purchased prior to her appointment to the Fed in 2022 as her “primary” residence to obtain a lower mortgage rate.
The issue has been referred to the Justice Department, but no charges have been laid so far. It has also emerged that on at least two documents Cook listed the second property as a “vacation” dwelling, and the interest she paid on it was slightly above the market rate at the time.
Despite these setbacks, the Trump administration is relentlessly pursuing the case and has now lodged an appeal to the Supreme Court to have the lower court decisions overturned.
In its emergency appeal, the administration said that in view of the uniquely important role of the Fed it was in the public’s interest that “an ethically compromised member does not continue wielding its vast powers.”
Ethics has nothing to do with it, as the case of rabid Trump supporter Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas shows. Thomas, among other things, has had expensive trips financed by real estate developer and right-wing activist Harlan Crow. He has also received gifts from ultra-wealthy corporate chiefs.
Trump’s motivations were made clear shortly after the action was initiated against Cook in August, when he said, “We’ll have a majority very shortly.”
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The push for lower interest rates—the driving force of Trump’s attempt to take control of the Fed—has two motivations.
One of them is to provide a further boost to the stock market and the financial oligarchs who form the base of his regime, as well as providing support for the burgeoning crypto market, which is directly beneficial to Trump and his family. Forbes estimates Trump has already raked in $1 billion from this source and could make billions more. While serving the oligarchy, the president takes his cut.
The lowering of interest rates has nothing to do with providing a boost to the real economy or countering a clearly weakening labor market, where one of the chief immediate impediments to economic growth and employment is the elevation of the cost structure due to the Trump tariff hikes.
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In his ongoing rants against Fed Chair Jerome Powell, Trump has pointed to another of the motivations for demands for interest rate cuts—the rising interest bill on US government debt, running at close to $1 trillion. It is fast becoming the largest item in the US budget, along with military spending. US finances are approaching a situation where more money must be borrowed just to pay the interest bill on past debts.
The worsening situation is highlighted in an article in the current edition of Foreign Affairs headlined “America’s Coming Crash.” The author is former International Monetary Fund chief economist Kenneth Rogoff, now a professor at Harvard.
He begins by noting that for the past quarter of a century the world has “looked in wonder at the United States’ ability to borrow its way out of trouble,” and that “again and again” the US was able to use debt to fight wars, global recessions, pandemics and financial crises.
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There are now very clear indications that confidence in the US dollar—the basis of the ability of the US to lift debt to record heights—is weakening rapidly. It has lost 10 percent of its value against other currencies so far this year, and all indications are that it has further to go.
Last week a note issued by Deutsche Bank said that “foreign investors are removing dollar exposure at an unprecedented rate.”
While they are still pouring money into the rising US stock market—recalling the adage by former Citigroup chief Chuck Prince in 2007 that “as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance”—they are hedging their dollar bets in the expectation that the dollar will fall.
The rising price of gold is another indication of a growing lack of confidence in the US dollar as a fiat currency, backed by no real value, but only by the US financial system and its state.
The price of gold is now over $3,600 per ounce, having risen more than 35 percent so far this year. Goldman Sachs has predicted it could reach $4,000 by the middle of next year and has said it could climb to $5,000 if the attacks by Trump on the Fed are seen to damage the Fed’s independence.
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Last week’s Fed meeting gave the appearance of calm. As the Wall Street Journal put it, it looked like “routine monetary policy,” the markets “largely shrugged,” and Powell “mostly avoided acrimonious dissents over a decision that came amid unprecedented political confrontation.”
But that confrontation indicated that just below the surface there are tensions building up within the financial system that will at some point erupt.
5. United States: ICE crackdown in Michigan targets non-criminal working class immigrants
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has instituted a policy of mass arrests and deportations of Michigan immigrants under Trump’s executive orders claiming the need to rid the country of “the worst of the worst” criminals. A report published September 4 by the Detroit News directly refutes these lies....
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ICE has pursued this mass arrest campaign through two distinct programs: first, by making requests of local, state, and federal detention facilities to notify it of an immigrant’s release from detention, or to hold an immigrant for up to 48 hours after they would otherwise be released to enable ICE to make an arrest; second, through public encounters such as traffic stops. More than 700 detainer requests have been sent so far in 2025. Only approximately seven percent of immigrants named in these requests had been convicted of violent crimes or drug crimes.
Once arrested, immigrants are held in one of five detention centers throughout Michigan. In addition to the recently-reopened and GEO Group-operated North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin—the largest immigration detention center in the Midwest, with 1,800 beds—immigrants are being held in the Monroe County Jail in Monroe, the Calhoun County Jail in Battle Creek, the St. Clair County Jail in Port Huron, and the Chippewa County Jail in Sault Saint Marie. As of early August 2025, these five facilities held nearly 800 immigrants, more than half of them at North Lake.
ICE has a routine practice of shuffling detainees through its network of detention facilities, and transferring detainees to states and federal appeals circuit courts with anti-immigrant tendencies, such as the Fifth Circuit, which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), by conducting deportation proceedings in a jurisdiction friendly to it, can obtain easier deportation orders while still “guaranteeing” due process rights.
The Detroit ICE field office has overseen the deportation of approximately 2,300 people to more than 80 countries in the first six months of 2025, with approximately 42 percent of those deported being Mexican citizens. Those deported include at least 40 children younger than 16, the youngest of whom is three or four years old.
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Compounding the threat of arrest for working class immigrants is the fact that several local police departments in Michigan have signed formal agreements under ICE’s 287(g) program. Berrien, Calhoun, and Jackson Counties now operate under the Warrant Service Officer program, in which their respective sheriff's departments are trained by ICE to serve and execute administrative warrants on immigrants in their agency’s jail.
The Roscommon County Police Department, the Metro Police Authority in Genesee County, and the City of Taylor have agreed to work under the Task Force Model, which operates as a “force multiplier” and permits these police departments to enforce limited immigration authority during routine police duties. Even without formal agreements, Michigan police departments cooperate with ICE of their own volition, often contacting ICE or Customs and Border Protection agents to interpret during routine traffic stops.
The World Socialist Web Site has reported the Trump administration’s banning of bond hearings for immigrants. While the unlawful internal memorandum the DHS issued on July 8 set the foundation for this practice, the Board of Immigration Appeals legitimized it through its decision in the “Matter of Yajure Hurtado,” issued on September 5.
The Democratic Party has provided pivotal support for Trump’s mass detention and deportation policies from the start of his second term. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) pronounced in January that “We Democrats want to see our broken immigration system fixed.” Democrats provided critical votes for the “Laken Riley Act,” legislation that greatly expands the power of police agencies to detain and deport immigrants who have merely been accused, not convicted, of petty crimes. It requires federal immigration police to take custody of immigrants simply accused of theft, burglary or shoplifting totaling $100. Both Michigan Democratic Senators, Elissa Slotkin and Gary Peters, as well as Democratic House Representative Kristen McDonald Rivet, voted “yes” on the Laken Riley Act.
For her part, Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has endorsed Biden administration proposals to “make it easier for immigration officers to remove those who are here unlawfully.” She approved deploying the Michigan National Guard to the southern border under both Trump and Biden, and opposed state benefits for undocumented Michigan workers.
This year, under Whitmer, the North Lake Correctional Facility was opened. Indicative of the further collaboration between Whitmer and the fascist president, in late April, the Democratic governor boosted Trump, greeting him at Selfridge Air Force Base and celebrating his investments in the “recapitalization” of the base, which will now host F-15 fighter jets.
The Republican-controlled Michigan House of Representatives has introduced House Bill 4339, which would prohibit Michigan counties from enacting or enforcing any law, ordinance or policy that prohibits local police from cooperating with federal officials in enforcing immigration law. Republican State Representative Joseph G. Pavlov of the 64th District, who introduced House Bill 4339 earlier this year, has stated “[r]espect for the Constitution and respect for the rule of law demand that we put an end to sanctuary cities in our state… [l]ocal governments in Michigan not only openly defy our constitutional order by harboring illegal immigrants, they also invite dangerous criminals into our communities… [w]e cannot tolerate this willful criminality.”
Republican State Representative Angela Rigas of the 79th District, a co-sponsor of the bill, has falsely claimed that sanctuary policies have been used to protect dangerous criminals, stating that “[t]here is no justifiable excuse for harboring illegal aliens… as every single person that enters our country illegally is a criminal because they broke the law and must be deported.”
These two statements are as horrific as they are stupid. Both Representatives Pavlov and Rigas falsely conflate simple lack of immigration status in the United States with criminality to justify stripping constitutionally guaranteed due process rights from huge swaths of people.
Concerning Republican angst over “sanctuary jurisdictions,” on August 5 the Department of Justice, as directed by Trump’s April 28, 2025, Executive Order 14287 (“Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens”), published a list of states and municipalities deemed to “violate, obstruct, and defy the enforcement of federal immigration laws.” The only Michigan municipality on this list is East Lansing.
It should be noted that the list was published only a few days before Trump’s military takeover of the District of Columbia, and that the list includes the District of Columbia, as well as Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Portland—all of which have been threatened with military occupation. That Trump’s hardline immigration enforcement is simply a first step to the establishment of a police state could not be more clear.
The Trump regime’s attacks on immigrants must be stopped, and they must be seen for what they are: a precursor to attacks on the rights of the working class as a whole.
6. Trump, Vance turn Kirk funeral into Christian-fascist rally
In a spectacle that was a toxic stew of Christian fundamentalism with American nationalism, President Donald Trump and his top aides transformed a memorial ceremony in Glendale, Arizona, for Charlie Kirk, the leader of the far-right student group Turning Point USA, killed earlier this month, into a fascist rally.
The clear aim of Trump and other top officials—which included Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller—was to use Kirk’s death as the basis for building a fascist movement in America.
They and other speakers, including evangelical preachers and officers of Turning Point USA, hailed Kirk as a martyr for religion-based politics, depicting him as a Christ-like figure, despite his well-established advocacy of racism, sexism, homophobia and thinly disguised support for political violence.
The entire tenor of the event was deranged and violent. Speaker after speaker proclaimed Christ as the most important figure in their lives, and that the United States could only succeed to the extent that it embraced that conception.
This prescription for a theocratic state is profoundly at odds with the reality of modern America, where nearly 40 percent of the population profess either no religion (31 percent) or a faith other than Christianity (7 percent), and where two-thirds of self-identified Christians say they rarely attend church or that religion is not of great importance in their lives.
The lineup of speakers was an indication of the authoritarian character of the regime Trump is establishing. While a half-dozen cabinet members spoke, as well as Trump and Vance, there were no prominent senators or congressmen, even though House Speaker Mike Johnson and many other leaders of the Republican-controlled Congress were in attendance. Congress has been reduced to a rubber stamp, and that was evident at the rally.A prominent slot was given to Jack Posobiec, a close Trump ally and longtime promoter of fascist and white nationalist politics. Denouncing “the left, the Democrats and the media,” Posobiec proclaimed that the “sacrifice” of Kirk would become a “pivotal movement” in the “saving of Western civilization” by “returning the people to almighty God.”
In a call for violence, Posobeic shouted, “Are you ready to fight back? Are you ready to put on the full armor of God and face the evil in high places and the spiritual warfare before us?” Posobiec, notorious for playing a leading role in the January 6, 2021 attempted coup, has extensive ties to white supremacist and neo-Nazi organizations and individuals.
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Trump made few religious references in his 40-minute closing address, focusing instead on denouncing the “radical left,” claiming in one of his most brazen lies that most political violence in the United States comes from the left. In reality, figures compiled by the Anti-Defamation League and every credible study show that more than 80 percent of political violence is carried out by fascist, racist, neo-Nazi and other ultra-right groups.
Trump used Kirk’s death as a springboard for a renewed call to unleash the National Guard against the American population. Citing what he claimed were Kirk’s “last words”—“Please, sir, save Chicago”—Trump promised to send federal troops into that city and others. He framed the deployment of military forces as necessary to confront “radical left violence,” blaming left-wing organizations, without evidence, for Kirk’s killing.
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The Trump administration and the coterie of fascists and reactionaries speaking in Arizona are exploiting Kirk’s killing to criminalize dissent and prepare the violent suppression of the working class. The Glendale rally made clear that Kirk is being transformed into a martyr of the MAGA movement, and his death is being weaponized to accelerate the construction of a police state in the United States.
7. Sri Lankan power workers oppose government restructuring plans
Tens of thousands of workers took industrial action last week against the restructuring of the state-owned Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB). As part of the IMF austerity program, the government is dividing the CEB into four state-owned companies, paving the way for their eventual privatization.
The widespread opposition among workers to the restructuring forced CEB trade union leaders to call limited action—a sick-note campaign involving 15,000 workers—on September 17–18 in a bid to let off steam.
Around 10,000 workers joined the two-day protest in front of the CEB headquarters in Colombo, including 7,000 on the first day, according to the trade unions, despite wet weather.
President Anura Dissanayake threatened workers, telling a public meeting at the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation-owned oil storage complex in Kolonnawa on September 17 that the restructuring program would continue.
Dissanayake defended his government’s new bill to restructure the CEB, replacing existing legislation, by declaring it “protects the country’s power sovereignty” and “makes the CEB efficient.” Referring to the industrial action, Dissanayake warned: “We can’t work like that.”
He reiterated comments by Energy Minister Kumara Jayakody on September 15, saying CEB employees who do not agree with the restructuring could resign. “No one can disrupt” the government’s restructuring plan, he insisted.
His claim that that the CEB will not be sold under the new bill is a lie. Whatever his claims, its purpose like the previous legislation is to break up and privatise the CEB.
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The trade union bureaucrats are not opposed to the restructuring as such and only insist that they should be actively involved in the process. Their attitude was spelled out in the slogan on a union picket board handed to CEB workers: “Do the restructuring properly.”
At a media briefing on September 18, the president of the Joint Electricity Workers’ Union, Charitha Sri Chinthaka, addressed Dissanayake fondly as “comrade President” and reiterated his desire to “resolve the issue peacefully.”
Workers must understand that the attack on their rights flows from the government’s determination to implement the IMF’s demands in full. On this the union leaders agree, telling workers that the IMF’s demands cannot be rejected because the economy must be restored.
But which economy are they talking about? It is the capitalist economy dominated by the banks, big business, foreign investors and loan sharks that are demanding that working people must bear the burden of the economic crisis.
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What is necessary is a unified struggle for a workers’ and peasants’ government committed to a socialist program including the nationalization of all economic nerve centers, including all banks, big companies and plantations under workers’ democratic control.
In this fight, workers in Sri Lanka need to unite with their class brothers and sisters internationally who face similar attacks, by joining with the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
8. Major protests against corruption in the Philippines
On Sunday, September 21, massive protests against corruption were held in cities throughout the Philippines, crowds of tens of thousands assembling despite the rain. The protests were organized and took shape in response to recent revelations of widespread corruption surrounding flood control infrastructure projects, involving kickbacks to government officials and elected representatives, and the theft of billions by private contractors.
The protests were the largest seen in the Philippines in two decades—one hundred thousand people demonstrated in Manila, and tens of thousands rallied in other cities throughout the country. The protests occur in the context of other expressions of social unrest targeting corruption, including mass demonstrations in Indonesia, and rioting in Nepal that led to the ouster of the government.
2025 has been one of the worst years for flooding on record in the Philippines. Over 31 people died in the typhoon flooding in July. Particularly devastating was a record-setting rainfall in August, 4.8 inches fell in one hour, exceeding the record set by Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) in 2009. The deluge overwhelmed drainage capacity and produced widespread flooding in Quezon City.
Typhoons and catastrophic damage caused by flooding, particularly during the rainy season of June to August, have plagued the Philippines throughout the history of its post-war urbanization. The sprawling, densely crowded communities of urban poor, their homes built on the worst land, combined with an utterly unplanned and underfunded system of public infrastructure, produces an annual cycle of inundation and misery.
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The flooding, and the human misery that it causes, are fundamentally the fault of capitalism, not corruption. The unplanned and unregulated growth of Greater Manila, the complete absence of any system of public housing, the formation of vast shantytowns along canals and riverbanks without sewage or running water, the profit-mad speculations of real estate developers, the immense chasm of social inequality between the mansions of Forbes Park and the inundated homes of Marikina—these are all the products of capitalism.
It is anger at the misery produced by capitalism that fuels the protests in the Philippines, but the protests have gathered behind banners targeting corruption. The emergence of the corruption charges over the past four months is bound up with the political volatility of the Asia Pacific region as it confronts the uncertainty and immense economic havoc of the Trump tariffs, and the increasingly imminent danger of war between the United States and China.
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Marcos announced days before the events that he supported the protests as long as they were peaceful. This was more than political posturing; the ultimate orientation of the leaders of the various demonstrations, despite some anti-Marcos slogans and banners, is towards an alliance against the forces of Duterte.
BAYAN and Akbayan, which formed in the 1990s out of the break-up of the front organizations of the Stalinist Communist Party of the Philippines, have long been engaged in political warfare with each other. They are coming into ever closer alignment with each other out of their shared orientation to sections of the Philippine bourgeoisie hostile to China.
Pro-Duterte forces staged protests in some cities demanding the return of Duterte from the Hague, but these events were dwarfed by the anti-corruption rallies.
The political line of Sunday’s protests had a markedly middle-class character. The old, empty slogan of the Liberal Party under the Benigno Aquino III administration, 2010-16, “If there were no corrupt, there would be no poor,” was widely deployed. Celebrities, movie stars, and talk show hosts, were given the stage and the microphone, to curse corrupt politicians and corruption.
A great many of the tens of thousands who thronged the streets of Manila, Cebu, Bacolod, Baguio, and numerous other cities throughout the country were not drawn to the protests by an orientation to a particular faction of the bourgeoisie. There is a marked and growing social anger that fuels these demonstrations. The ultimate target of their hostility, whether they are conscious of it or not, is the social inequality and misery produced by capitalism.
But the banner of an anti-corruption campaign is a political dead-end. It is politically amorphous and can serve as an umbrella for bringing together a wide range of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties and organizations, including those of the far-right.
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The only means for ending corruption, and more fundamentally the vast social gulf between the obscenely wealthy few and impoverished masses, is to abolish capitalism. That requires the building of unified movement of the working class to lead the rural poor in the struggle for power and the refashioning of society on the basis of a socialist program.
9. Germany: Ford cuts a further 1,000 jobs in Cologne
Ford’s Cologne plant faces a slow death. Two weeks ago, the IG Metall union and works council pushed through the elimination of 2,900 jobs there. Last Tuesday, the company informed the workforce that from January 2026, production would be cut from two shifts to just one. As a result, a further 1,000 jobs are to be shed this year.
At a works meeting, management cited poor sales of its electric Capri and Explorer models, which are built in Cologne, as the reason for switching to single-shift operation. The company had invested €2 billion in converting the plant to e-mobility. While the IG Metall and works council helped to wind up the Ford plant in Saarlouis, the investment in Cologne and the supposed “secure future” of the plant were supposed to keep the workforce there quiet.
Now the entire site is under threat. The works council, led by IG Metall, announced “negotiations” with management to work out the terms and mechanisms of the latest round of cuts....
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It is hard to avoid the conclusion that Ford in the United States decided long ago to largely withdraw from production in Europe. The “America First” policy of President Donald Trump will dispel any remaining doubts about that decision—if there were any at all.
A group of residents of West Lafayette, Indiana, are campaigning against the construction of an SK hynix microchip plant and the rezoning of their residential neighborhood for heavy industry. They have organized under the banner “STOP Heavy Industry in Our Neighborhoods” to oppose the efforts of the City Council and Purdue University to push through the project.
In their petition, they declare:
“THIS FIGHT IS NOT OVER. West Lafayette City Council has prioritized corporate interests, ignored well-documented facts, and failed to represent their constituents. We do not accept this.”
The petition continues:
“On May 5, 2025, City Council voted against their own constituents, rezoning land owned by the Purdue Research Foundation (PRF) from residential to heavy industrial use. This cleared the way for SK hynix, a giant South Korean semiconductor manufacturer, to build a massive facility on PRF land surrounded by densely populated neighborhoods. We do not accept this.”
They pointed to the relationship between City Council officials and Purdue University, accusing them of conspiring against city residents. They cited a statement by the council and Purdue administrators claiming the rezoning of the residential neighborhoods would have “no adverse health effects.” With only one exception, all signatories had no training in public health, environmental science, toxicology or chemical safety. Instead, they were closely tied to the semiconductor industry.
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Reports sent anonymously to the World Socialist Web Site also allege that Purdue officials threatened workers’ jobs—and even their immigration status—if they opposed the SK hynix project publicly.
Two residents who spoke to WSWS, using pseudonyms, described widespread distrust of officials.
“One perspective is the lack of transparency from local and state officials,” Angela said. Not many people are covering this story. We have to connect the dots between the military buildup and what we as citizens need to do to inform everyone. They have plans to place industry at the service of the military for another nuclear arms race.”
Vicky added, “The Indiana Economic Development Corporation is rezoning land for tax purposes in the interest of these companies. It’s frightening to the connection between the agenda of the City Council and Purdue. Is this the community I want to raise a family in?”
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This local fight is tied to broader US war preparations. Since 2023, universities have been enlisted in military research, particularly in semiconductors, which are vital for weapons and global technological dominance. The 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, enacted under the Biden administration, provided $280 billion to US semiconductor companies for research and production aimed at “onshoring” chip production. This nationalist program has accelerated under Trump 2.0. At the heart of the building of SK Hynix and the harnessing of the universities to the US war drive is the nationalist “fortress America” program of all factions of the US ruling class.
Purdue is among more than 40 universities in the Scalable Asymmetric Lifecycle Engagement (SCALE) program. According to its website, SCALE aims to “develop a microelectronics workforce that is well prepared to meet the needs of the Department of Defense and the Defense Industrial Base.”
As the WSWS has noted, “These war projects at the universities are discussed and negotiated by university administrations and privileged, pro-war layers of the professoriate behind the backs of students and the overwhelming majority of academic workers. No doubt most students would oppose these pro-war machinations of the university administration if they knew about them and understood their political significance.”
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The US ruling elite sees the development of AI as central to its war aims. The development of DeepSeek by China is a major political concern of the Trump administration, which is focused on ensuring American global economic dominance above all against China.
This is being paid for by siphoning off the wealth generated by the working class into the coffers of the war profiteers and Wall Street. Since 2019, CEO pay has risen by 34.7 percent.
In the process, all concern for the health and safety of workers is being discarded. This has included the gutting of regulatory bodies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Health and Safety Administration. The recent explosion of the US Steel coke processing plant in Clairton, Pennsylvania is a recent tragic example of the dangers to which individual workers and whole communities are being subjected.
11. Australia: New South Wales doctors reject inadequate Labor government pay offer
Earlier this month, doctors in New South Wales (NSW) overwhelmingly voted down a miserly pay offer from the state Labor government of Premier Chris Minns. Labor’s proposed deal contained a nominal pay rise of 3 percent per annum, backdated to start from July 2024.
Doctors were not just rejecting the rotten deal, but its tacit endorsement by the Australian Salaried Medical Officers Federation (ASMOF), which promoted illusions that workers could accept the “interim” offer and patiently wait for arbitration in the state Industrial Relations Commission (IRC) to deliver further improvements to pay and conditions. The offer would have required that doctors commit to a total ban on industrial action until the IRC proceedings are complete, which is unlikely to be earlier than next year.
The rejected offer fell far short of what is needed to keep up with the rapidly increasing cost of living, including on housing and other essentials, let alone recoup losses incurred under successive real wage cuts imposed by Labor and Liberal-National governments with the assistance of ASMOF.
Doctors’ wages in New South Wales public hospitals are up to 30 percent lower than other Australian states, while NSW has the highest cost of living in the nation. First year doctors—who have already completed at least six years of university education, racking up enormous debts—are paid a base rate of $76,000 per annum, or just over $38 an hour. NSW doctors have not had a pay rise since 2023.
In addition to pay, NSW doctors also face onerous and unsafe working conditions, with unpaid overtime so rife that NSW Health last year settled a class action with 20,000 junior medical officers for $230 million over the practice.
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To fight for decent wages and conditions, and for a free high-quality public healthcare system, NSW doctors must conduct a unified struggle alongside nurses, midwives, as well as other health and public sector workers, who face a similar onslaught from the Labor government.
Such a struggle is impossible under the domination of the ASMOF bureaucracy or that of any of the other unions, which continually isolate and divide workers in different sections of the workforce, even among their own membership. This is a deliberate policy aimed at suppressing opposition to the dictates of management and government.
Therefore doctors and other health workers need to take matters into their own hands. Rank-and-file committees, democratically controlled by workers themselves and politically and organizationally independent from the union leaderships, must be built in every hospital and health facility. Through these committees, workers can discuss and implement a unified struggle across workplaces and professions for demands based on their actual needs, not what governments and their collaborators in the union apparatus dictate.
Contrary to the claims of governments and unions, the funds to provide high quality healthcare and good wages exist, but are squandered by capitalist governments on the defense of corporate profits and conducting imperialist wars.
12. Australian coal miners face 1,000 job cuts
Workers in metallurgical coal mines in the Bowen Basin of central Queensland are being confronted by two of the world’s biggest mining conglomerates seeking to eliminate about 1,000 jobs, with more possibly to come.
First, mining giant BHP Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) announced this month it would scrap 750 jobs and mothball its Saraji South mine at Dysart from November, throwing 72 Saraji South miners out of work.
BHP, one of the world’s largest mining companies, also placed its Central Queensland training academy under review, threatening more jobs and futures. The FutureFit Academy in the regional city of Mackay has trained more than 400 apprentices and trainees.
Then Anglo American, the third biggest global export producer of coking coal, said jobs were being slashed in the Bowen Basin and its office in Brisbane, the state capital.
Anglo American refused to detail the number of its redundancies, but Isaac Regional Council, the municipal government in the Bowen Basin, said more than 200 positions were involved. Workers told the World Socialist Web Site that Anglo American had offered at least 112 “voluntary redundancies” to miners “off the floor,” so most of the job cuts are affecting frontline workers.
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Speaking to the media, BMA asset president Adam Lancey sought to blame government royalties for the job cuts, saying they were necessary due to the “combined impact of the Queensland government’s unsustainable coal royalties and market conditions.”
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The truth is that world prices for metallurgical coal—that is coal used for steelmaking and other industrial process, not thermal coal for power generation—have dropped below $200 a tonne, from spot price peaks of up to $900 in 2022-23.
That actually means lower royalty payments under the scheme introduced by the former state Labor government in 2022. The coal royalty system’s three tiers require mine companies to pay more as coal prices go up—only 20 percent at $175 per tonne, 30 percent at $225 and 40 percent over $300.
In Facebook postings, media statements and messages to its members, the main trade union covering the workforce, the Mining and Energy Union (MEU), has flatly denied the widespread impact of the job losses on miners. The union officials are clearly seeking to head off and quash opposition by coal mine workers.
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There is no doubt that the coal giants are trying to exploit the coal price slump to demand that the current Liberal National Party state government reduce the coal royalties in order to restore higher profits. But the price fall is due to global factors, including falling demand in China and rising supply.
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A longstanding Bowen Basin coal miner, who wanted to remain anonymous out of concern for management retribution, said workers were being kept in the dark about the extent of the cuts and the reasons for them.
“We don’t get told what prices the companies are getting for coal,” he commented. “There’s no workers’ control over this industry, but we suffer the consequences.”
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The miner said it was not yet clear whether the drop in metallurgical coal prices was a downturn or only a slowdown. It could be the result of slowing growth in China and India, intensified by the Trump administration’s tariffs and trade war.
13. Anti-immigrant “March for Australia” rallies were organized by neo-Nazis
An investigation by the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH), partly based on research by the anti-fascist White Rose collective, has revealed that the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network (NSN) had a far more central role in the planning and organization of anti-immigrant marches last month than was previously known.
That is of significance for several reasons. The “March for Australia” protests, though dwarfed in size by dozens of pro-Palestinian rallies over the past two years, were the largest far-right mobilization in the country in years, if not decades.
Speakers included not only right-wing social media celebrities but also politicians in the federal parliament, such as Bob Katter and representatives of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
The rallies took up and exploited anti-immigrant agitation by the federal Labor government and the Liberal-National Coalition, both of which have blamed “foreigners” for a social crisis caused by their own pro-business policies.
And in turn, the rallies received a favorable echo from the political establishment. Leading Coalition politician, Jacinta Price, responded with comments demonizing Indian immigrants. Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who has venomously attacked demonstrators opposing the Gaza genocide, declared there were “good people” among the far-right protesters.
The NSN is an avowedly Nazi organization that glorifies Adolf Hitler. Its leader, Thomas Sewell, attempted to recruit Brenton Tarrant, who would later carry out the Christchurch massacre in New Zealand, killing 51 Muslims and wounding 89 more. The NSN continues to venerate Tarrant.
The NSN’s prominent involvement in the “March for Australia” was obvious at the events themselves. In Sydney and Melbourne, its black-clad members led the demonstrations and NSN leaders spoke in both cities. In Melbourne, the NSN, including Sewell, besieged and violently attacked the Indigenous Camp Sovereignty gathering place at the end of the demonstration.
The NSN’s role in initiating and organising the protests, however, was publicly concealed. The rallies were presented as expressions of a “grassroots” movement, with the official organizers largely consisting of social media personalities, some of whom use pseudonyms.
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White Rose researcher Kaz Ross noted in comments to the Herald that, even in the context of the rise of far-right forces internationally, the key involvement of an explicitly Nazi group in a broader anti-immigration mobilization is striking.
That is a measure of the reactionary forces that the Australian political establishment is unleashing. As Ross and other anti-fascist researchers have noted, the majority of those in attendance at the “March for Australia” were not Nazis and many likely would not have attended had they known of the NSN’s central role.
But the unifying element of the crowds, predominantly older “white” men, was a hostility to immigrants and refugees. The far-right speakers all demonized immigrants for every aspect of the social crisis, from housing unaffordability to the degradation of social services. In their speeches, the NSN leaders said little different except for a more explicitly racist emphasis on the need for a “white Australia.”
Throughout the global inflation crisis, the federal Labor government has inflicted an enormous increase in the cost-of-living on ordinary people.
In addition to rejecting even miserly measures to address the crisis and continuing tax breaks and other policies that benefit the ultra-wealthy, Labor, working with big business and the corporatized trade unions, has enforced real wage cuts, such that the average purchasing power of a worker has declined by 9 percent since 2019.
In producing this social misery on behalf of the capitalist class and then scapegoating immigrants and refugees, Labor has created fertile ground for far-right forces to make a pitch.
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The claims that the “white” population is being displaced is the central theme of far-right and fascistic agitation, including from the NSN. Known as the “Great Replacement Theory,” it posits a conspiracy to “replace” people of European ancestry through mass migration, generally orchestrated by a Jewish cabal. This antisemitic theory was central to the ideology of the fascist terrorist Tarrant.
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While there is no mass far-right movement in Australia, the “March for Australia” and the increasing promotion of anti-immigrant rhetoric by the entire political establishment is a warning of attempts by the ruling elite to cultivate such a fascistic tendency. As is the case internationally, the capitalist class is turning to far-right and authoritarian forces, to impose its inherently unpopular program of war abroad and an assault on social and living conditions.
As the Socialist Equality Party raised in a comment following the “March for Australia,” the rise of far-right forces cannot be combated without a political struggle against the Labor government, whose anti-immigrant demagogy and social attacks form the breeding ground and the basis of such tendencies.
14. Faced with mounting US pressure, Mexico slaps trade tariffs on China
On Wednesday, September 10, Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum announced legislation related to the 2026 budget proposal that would slap tariffs of between 10 percent and 50 percent on a wide range of goods, including ones made in the automotive, textile, plastic, steel, clothing, toy, footwear, furniture, paper and glass sectors.
The proposal is part of the Mexican government’s stated goals of reducing reliance on imports and protecting Mexican industry. Those goals are set out in its “Plan México” industrial policy, which was made public in January.
The proposal states that its aim is to “take advantage of our internal market so that production takes place in Mexico and employs Mexican workers.” At the same time, it seeks to contribute to the “balancing” of foreign trade for the “well-being” of “all Mexicans.”
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The reform bill sets a goal of sourcing “at least 50 percent of strategic supplies” in Mexico. Further, it says, “tariffs are no longer seen solely as a means of raising revenue, but become a strategic tool for economic and trade policy.” Around 50 countries with which Mexico has a free trade agreement will not be subject to the new proposed tariffs. China is not one of them.
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Mexico recently surpassed Russia as the top recipient of cars from China, which sent about 280,100 vehicles to Mexico in the first half of 2025, a 25 percent increase year-on-year.
Overall, Mexico is China’s second-largest trading partner in Latin America, and China is Mexico’s third-largest export recipient.
The Mexico announcement triggered a swift pushback from Beijing, which urged Mexico to reconsider.
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China’s auto manufacturers have inherently lower production costs so their cars may remain competitive in the Mexican market, dulling the impact of the announced tariffs.
For example, the world’s biggest electric car maker, Shenzen’s BYD Co., sells its Dolphin Mini hatchback in Mexico for around 399,800 pesos ($21,500). In contrast, General Motors Co.’s Equinox, one of the least expensive electric cars available in the country from a legacy brand, starts from about 876,990 pesos, almost twice as much.
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Chinese trade with Latin America overall grew to a record $518 billion in 2024, according to Chinese state media. China currently ranks as South America’s top trading partner, and the second largest for Latin America as a whole, after the United States.
Domination of Latin America as a region in its entirety is a critical strategic goal of US imperialism, one that the Trump administration is ramping up with increasing economic and military threats. Mexico’s bourgeoisie is driven to navigate between escalating pressure from Washington and its relations with Beijing, the country’s second biggest trading partner.
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Production is already fully international in scale. Under world socialism, production would be undertaken rationally in the interests of the entire world population, not those of the dominant classes of competing individual nations, which inevitably lead to imperialism and war. Dog eat dog trade wars would likewise become a thing of the past.
15. UAW bureaucracy shuts down powerful GE Aerospace strike in Cincinnati, Ohio area
The United Auto Workers shut down the three-week strike by 640 workers at GE Aerospace plants in the Greater Cincinnati, Ohio area on Friday. The walkout disrupted the production of marine and industrial engines for the US Navy and the distribution of parts to other GE Aerospace plants, which produce aircraft engines for the US, Israeli and other militaries.
The UAW bureaucracy, led by Shawn Fain, halted the powerful strike, in a further signal to the Trump administration that it can be relied on to suppress working-class opposition to the worsening economic and social situation and the fascist president’s dictatorship and expanding wars. Fain has emerged as a pivotal supporter of Trump’s trade war and economic nationalism and has offered the services of the UAW bureaucracy to impose labor discipline in the factories, especially in defense industry plants like GE Aerospace.
UAW officials claimed 82 percent of workers ratified the union-backed proposal, but did not release a breakdown of the results. This was not a vote of confidence in the UAW leadership by workers nor did it expresses workers’ faith in the UAW’s claims that the new five-year deal was a great victory. Instead, the workers who were left isolated on the picket line for three weeks, surviving on poverty-level UAW strike benefits of $500 a week, did not believe that the UAW would bring back anything better and therefore voted to end the strike.
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Predictably, UAW Local 647 President Brian Strunk declared that the union had won a total victory. “Together we stood like David against Goliath—shoulder to shoulder against a billion-dollar company, refusing to be treated as just numbers. We secured job security, more time with our families, and money to offset health care costs.”
That is a lie.
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Meanwhile, Wall Street and GE Aerospace executives are celebrating the deal. The company’s stock prices shot up the day of the vote on Friday and Christian Meisner, Chief Human Resources Officer, GE Aerospace gushed that the company was “pleased” with the vote, adding, “With these contracts in place, we look forward to our UAW-represented employees returning to work and resuming normal operations, continuing to deliver for our customers, and driving our shared success.”
Just days before, GE Aerospace management had threatened to fire workers from other unions who had honored UAW members’ picket lines. The other unions, which had previously signed sellout deals, surrendered before these threats.
Fain and the UAW apparatus never wanted the strike in the first place. They only called the strike after they became convinced they could not get another rotten deal passed without calling workers out and wearing down their resistance. At that point Fain’s PR department issued videos and militant-sounding rhetoric about fighting “corporate greed.” Once the strike began, the UAW International isolated the workers while local officials paraded Democrats Sherrod Brown and Marcy Kaptur—who voted in 2022 voted to ban the railroad strike—on the picket line, falsely presenting them as allies. At the same time, they were in daily behind-the-scenes discussion with Republican US Senator Bernie Moreno, a right-wing Trump attack dog, to end the strike.
16. Trump purges Virginia prosecutor and threatens attorney general in drive to weaponize DOJ
The Trump administration’s purge of federal prosecutors entered a new stage last week with the forced resignation of Erik Siebert, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Several reports indicate that Siebert resigned on Friday after resisting demands from the White House to bring politically motivated charges in a mortgage fraud probe against New York Attorney General Letitia James.
For years, James has been a particular target of Trump’s wrath because she prosecuted him and his businesses in New York, winning a massive civil fraud case that forced the Trump Organization to pay millions in penalties. This exposure of Trump’s decades-long practice of inflating property values to secure loans and deflating them to evade taxes struck at the core of his image as a “successful businessman.”
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Until [President Trump's nominated replacement for Siebert, Lindsey] Halligan is confirmed by the Senate, Attorney General Pam Bondi named Mary “Maggie” Clearly, a Republican lawyer from Culpeper, Virginia as interim attorney.
In a follow-up post on Saturday after naming Halligan, Trump threatened current attorney general Bondi.
“Pam,” Trump wrote,
I have reviewed over 30 statements and posts saying that, essentially, “same old story as last time, all talk, no action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam ‘Shifty’ Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.” Then we almost put in a Democrat-supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with a really bad Republican past. A Woke RINO, who was never going to do his job. That’s why two of the worst Dem Senators PUSHED him so hard.
Trump then praised Halligan and called on Bondi to bring charges against the three he had named, former FBI Director James Comey, Senator Adam Schiff (California-Democrat) and New York Attorney General James:
We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! President DJT
For years Trump has denounced the supposed “weaponization” of the DOJ under Biden, echoed by the Republican Party and its media auxiliaries. In fact, the opposite was the case. Far from targeting Trump, the Biden administration and Democratic Party shielded him and his accomplices. Prosecutions were delayed, narrowed, or blocked outright. Nearly three years passed before even limited charges were filed over the January 6 coup attempt.
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The “hands-off” approach to Trump was one more expression of the Democrats’ function as a party of Wall Street and imperialism.
By contrast, Trump is carrying out the genuine weaponization of the Justice Department: installing loyalists, removing any official who resists, demanding prosecutions of political opponents on fraudulent grounds and quashing investigations into political allies and cronies.
17. The Stalinist terror in the Communist International and its impact
This lecture was delivered by Katja Rippert, a member of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (SGP), the German section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), at the SEP (US) International Summer School, held August 2-9, 2025. It is the second part of a three-part lecture on the Great Terror in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. The first part was “Political Genocide in the USSR (1936-1940): The Moscow Trials and the Dewey Commission”.
18. ひろしま / hiroshima: Beautiful and poignant images of the everyday, but is that enough?
A photographic exhibition at the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in London explores “Hiroshima’s experience as history’s first nuclear target.”
The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II in August 1945 is one of the most harrowing chapters in modern history. Some 120,000 people were incinerated instantly and 300,000 more were killed by the after-effects.
Eighty years later, the world again faces the danger of nuclear war. The use of tactical nuclear strikes is openly discussed in the media, and US President Donald Trump described the airstrikes he authorized on Iran’s nuclear facilities last June as a decisive act that “ended the war” with Israel, much like the atomic bombing.
Over the decades, Hiroshima has been represented in countless visual forms, from iconic black-and-white images of devastation to stark documentary evidence and evocative memorials.
In recent years, however, a movement has emerged with the declared aim of moving beyond direct representation of death and destruction. This is a daunting task for an artist. How is it possible to explore artistically mass deaths resulting from wars and military conflicts, genocides and ethnic cleansing, famines and disease outbreaks without the risk of downplaying the horrors or avoiding a critical assessment of the causes?
Three of this movement’s leading representatives have been brought together here for the Daiwa Foundation Gallery’s eightieth anniversary commemoration. On display is a small selection—16 photographs and one video—of the works of three women artists who, in “different ways,” address the “everyday realities” and “personal memories” of today’s inhabitants of Hiroshima, which have “largely been overlooked.”
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There are problems with these artists’ works though. Alarm bells rang when so many reviews stress their “uniquely gendered perspectives,” their challenge to the dominance of male-centered documentary and resistance to “grand narratives” (by which is meant Marxist historical materialism), offering instead intimate, human-scale reflections on trauma, survivorship, resilience, and remembrance.
19. United Kingdom: Bus drivers at three companies in Greater Manchester begin strike action
More than 2,000 UK bus drivers at three companies began a four-day strike across Greater Manchester Friday, after rejecting substandard pay offers. Further strikes are planned from September 30 to October 2.
Around two-thirds of services were affected. The strike coincided with a Saturday football match hosted by Manchester United and various concerts in the city.
The Unite union members are employed by private companies Stagecoach, Metroline and First Bus, which operate as franchises under the Bee Network. The Bee Network is coordinated by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), under the control Greater Manchester Authority comprising 10 councils headed by Labour Party Mayor Andy Burnham.
The private companies make vast profits, at the expense of the low pay and poor conditions of their employees.
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Drivers in Oldham on an over 100-strong picket of the Metro tram stage spoke to World Socialist Web Site reporters.
One driver remarked on the “good level of support from the public. We’ve handed out 1,000 leaflets.”
A driver for over 30 years said, “They’ve been messing us about since April. We were initially offered 56p [an hour rise]! There’s enough money to give drivers a good wage. They [management] can afford to give themselves a pay rise every year.
Described the stressful conditions at work, he said, “What the public don’t realize about my job, some days it’s fantastic, but some days are horrendous. I’m supposed to be a company ambassador, revenue collector, security, all these different hats. But I’m the first person they drag in for a disciplinary.
“Some of these routes end up in places like Uppermill where there are no facilities such as toilets. When I get to the terminus, I walk up and down for circulation—I’ve known drivers who’ve suffered with deep vein thrombosis. I’m allowed to drive for 10 hours over 16 hours but if you hit traffic or accidents, you are working over hours.”
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A driver who has worked for Stagecoach for over a decade, explained, “It’s hard to live, given the cost of living, we need better pay to survive. The companies are making a huge amount of money; it’s always been like that. They give us an ultimatum—take the offer or leave.”
World Socialist Web Site reporters raised the necessity of workers employed within the bus conglomerates making links with each other internationally as part of a rank-and file fightback. The driver agreed, saying, “This company’s massive, Stagecoach is in Australia, and they’re filling their own pockets.”
Metroline, which employs 1,000 drivers working out of the Hyde Road, Ashton, Sharston and Wythenshawe depots, has parent company ComfortDelGro based in Singapore. It made profits of £60 million from its subsidiaries in the UK and European the first half of 2025.
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“The strike’s not just about pay but conditions like timetables. When they do timetables, they don’t consider the massive increases in traffic with all the housebuilding in Manchester. It’s very stressful, and some drivers are over 70 and still working.”
Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said, “All of the firms involved in this dispute are highly profitable—but their workers are denied a fair wage while their employers line their pockets.”
This is said while Unite makes no call for taking public transport out of the hands of the profiteers, instead demanding a place for the union bureaucracy alongside the council leaders and company executives as they discuss further extending franchising across England and Wales. Bee Network workers should establish a joint strike committee across the companies independent of the Unite bureaucracy, as a first step to widening the fight for wages and conditions—linked to taking control and ownership of transport out of the hands of parasitic companies.
20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
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.
