Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Trump declares war on American cities and the “enemy within”
Speaking before hundreds of generals and admirals assembled at a Marine Corps base outside Washington D.C., President Donald Trump and “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth laid out a plan for establishing a presidential dictatorship in America. Trump told the military brass that they would play a central role in subduing his political opponents within the United States and that any officer who was unwilling to do so should immediately resign.
The Quantico spectacle was an attempt to build an American version of Hitler’s Waffen SS. And if White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller is playing the role of Trump’s Joseph Goebbels, then Hegseth is assuming the position of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler’s top military aide.
The focus of Trump’s address was to justify the widespread use of military force against American cities. “We’re going to straighten them out one by one,” Trump said, “and this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room.” He added, “That’s a war too. It’s a war from within.”
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Trump has already begun implementing this policy with the deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles, followed by the occupation of Washington D.C., the nation’s capital, by heavily armed federal agents and National Guard troops from a half-dozen Republican-controlled states. Over the weekend, the US president ordered federal forces to Portland, Oregon. National Guard troops are set to deploy to Memphis, Tennessee this week, and Trump told his military audience that Chicago would be next, while also mentioning San Francisco and New York as future targets.
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The timing of Trump’s conclave with the generals, coinciding with the looming government shutdown, is not accidental. Trump intends to use the shutdown as a mechanism to massively restructure the American state and prepare an unprecedented assault on the working class. Moreover, if midterm elections are even held next year, they will take place under conditions of repression and militarization, in what will be, in effect, an occupied country.
In his remarks, which preceded Trump’s, Hegseth issued a series of directives aimed at completely subordinating the military to Trump’s personal control and the fascistic program of the administration. Some directives were aimed at giving US military forces free rein to slaughter civilians and commit other war crimes without fear of any repercussions, let alone criminal prosecution. Hegseth also proposed making it effectively impossible for female or minority soldiers to make allegations of sexual or racial abuse against their commanders.
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At one point, in pondering the possibility of nuclear war, Trump said, “I call it the N-word. There are two N-words, and you can’t use either of them.” He added, in barely literate language, “If it does get to use, we have more than anybody else. We have better. We have newer.”
One unprecedented aspect of Trump’s speech was its open partisanship. Trump did not address the assembled generals and admirals as the commander in chief of the armed forces of the United States, but as the leader of a political party seeking their allegiance in the prosecution of a civil war against his domestic opponents.
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The purpose of deploying the military, he made clear, was to eliminate those enclaves of political opposition, beginning with major Democratic-controlled cities. No American president has ever before addressed the military in this manner—as the political leader of one faction, calling on the generals to help secure his triumph over another.
This, combined with denunciations from Miller and others of the Democrats as “domestic extremists,” makes all the more extraordinary the ongoing silence of the Democratic Party. Far from warning the population or mobilizing opposition, the Democrats have said virtually nothing about Trump’s threats to unleash the armed forces on American cities.
Instead, the party remains fixated on prosecuting the US-NATO war against Russia and preparing confrontation with China, while promoting the illusion that the “guardrails” of American democracy—the courts, the military itself, the intelligence agencies—will somehow restrain Trump. Congressional leaders like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have ignored Trump’s threats.
The supposed “left wing” of the party, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, have also been silent. Neither has said anything about the meeting of the generals. Jacobin magazine, the main publication associated with the Democratic Socialists of America, has also written nothing, in line with its editorial policy of saying as little as possible about the unprecedented assault on democratic rights in the US.
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The events of the past month follow a definite class logic. The meeting with tech oligarchs earlier this month, the nonstop denunciations of the “radical left,” the deployment of National Guard troops into US cities, the fascistic frenzy whipped up over the killing of Charlie Kirk, the threat to militarily occupy Portland, Trump’s speech before the military brass and the mass firings timed for the government shutdown all form part of a coordinated plan.
Every day that passes demonstrates not only the fascistic trajectory of Trump, but also the impotence of the Democratic Party and the absence of any constituency within the ruling class for basic democratic rights. The fight against dictatorship cannot be waged within the framework of the existing institutions.
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In its September 19 statement, “Trump’s fascist conspiracy and how to fight it: A socialist strategy,” the Socialist Equality Party elaborated the organization, program and strategy for a movement against dictatorship.
Last week the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that over 2 million “illegal aliens” had been removed or “self-deported” since January 20, 2025, including more than 400,000 formal deportations.
While his initial targets were immigrant workers, the militarization of Portland confirms that the administration is escalating its fascistic attacks to establish a dictatorship. Terrified by the immense opposition of the working population to its policies, the ruling elite is responding with repression.
The mass raids, detentions and deportations that have devastated immigrant families are now accompanied by sweeping assaults on democratic rights. Anyone who disagrees with the regime is branded a “terrorist,” while immigrants are cast as “criminals.”
The Democrats, for their part, refuse to wage a struggle against fascism. They are as frightened as Trump and the Republicans by the explosive levels of social inequality that threaten the stability of capitalist rule.
In Los Angeles, Maria, an undocumented immigrant, and Jacinto, a US permanent resident, spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about their lives, their struggles, and their understanding of the broader political situation. Their stories reveal both the immense hardships of immigrant families and the understanding that workers’ upcoming struggles require strategy, solidarity and international unity.
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Maria remembers the perilous journey across the US-Mexico border with her mother in 1995.
“We didn’t tell our family exactly when, just the week,” she explains. “The coyotes kept in touch, but at one point we were stranded in the mountains. It was dark, freezing. There were about eight of us, including a pregnant woman. We huddled together for warmth.”
They walked for hours, crossed a river, and endured the cold night. “My mom slipped and hurt her arm,” Maria says. “It was so dangerous. And it was expensive. My mom had to borrow money to pay for the crossing.”
With no family left in Mexico—all her siblings were already in the United States—Maria knew this would be her home. “I felt like there was nothing left for us in Mexico,” she says.
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Jacinto was born in Sinaloa, Mexico, where he received his early education. From the beginning, he was conscious of US domination. “In school we learned about how the United States took our land,” he says. “Texas, California, Colorado—all those names are Mexican. We didn’t cross the border—the border crossed us. We didn’t come to America—America came to us.”
He referenced dissent today. “Young people wave Mexican flags at protests,” Jacinto explains. “They know their Aztec, Mayan, Olmec roots. They understand that Mexico’s poverty is linked to US imperialism, built on theft, exploitation, Indigenous dispossession, and slavery.”
Jacinto later studied history at UCLA, which deepened his understanding of US imperialism. “No US president, Democrat or Republican, has ever improved conditions for immigrants,” he says. “They make progress on issues like abortion or LGBTQ rights, but for workers and immigrants, nothing changes. We remain exploited and repressed.”
He emphasizes the comparative nature of poverty. “Being poor in Mexico is worse than being poor here,” Jacinto says. “In the US, even the poor often have basic appliances, some social support. In Mexico, poverty is more absolute. That’s why people endure exploitation here—they compare it to worse conditions back home. But that makes us vulnerable to capitalism.”
For Jacinto, the so-called stereotype of the hardworking Mexican is not a stereotype at all. “It’s reality,” he says. “The wealth of this state rests on Latino labor.”
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Both Maria and Jacinto agree: the ruling class fears the unity of workers. “That’s why they send so many police to demonstrations,” Jacinto says. “They know we produce the wealth. They know we have power if we stand together.”
Maria adds, “We can’t survive alone. We need each other. Our children’s future depends on all workers fighting back together.”
3. King Vidor’s World War I film The Big Parade at 100
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Vidor’s early career took place amid the cataclysm of World War I. The war was fought by rival alliances of imperialist states, each seeking to expand its control of strategic territory and resources at the others’ expense. Waged with new technology such as tanks, machine guns and chemical weapons, the conflict was the deadliest in history to that point. Only the intervention of the working class—in the October 1917 Russian Revolution and a wave of revolutionary struggles throughout Europe—brought the horrific carnage to a halt. The 1914-1918 war was rooted in the structure of world capitalism and marked the opening of the era of imperialism: the epoch of wars and revolutions.
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World War I was still a recent memory in the mid-1920s, and economic and political contradictions were already preparing the ground for a new global catastrophe. The US was a rising power experiencing an industrial and financial boom, as well as increasing inequality. Socialist revolutions in Germany and Hungary had been drowned in blood. The biennio rosso (“two red years”) had ended in the defeat of the Italian proletariat and the triumph of Mussolini. The Dawes Plan temporarily mitigated a European political crisis by restructuring German reparations to the victors of World War I. The death of Lenin in 1924 was followed by Stalin’s proclamation of the anti-Marxist program of “socialism in one country.”
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Against this general backdrop, after making a string of uneven movies, Vidor told MGM producer Irving Thalberg, “If I were to work on something that … had a chance at long runs …, I would put much more effort, and love, into its creation,” according to the director’s autobiography A Tree Is a Tree (1953). “I wanted it to be the story of a young American who was neither overpatriotic or a pacifist, but who went to war and reacted normally to all the things that happened to him. It would be the story of the average guy…. He simply goes along for the ride and tries to make the most of each situation as it happens.” Thalberg was immediately interested, and The Big Parade was born
t the beginning of the film, we meet Jim Apperson (John Gilbert), the idle son of a wealthy mill owner. Though at first he laughs off the US declaration of war on Germany, he gets caught up in the ensuing wave of public enthusiasm and patriotism. Responding to pressure from his father, his fiancée Justyn (Claire Adams) and his friends, Jim enlists in the army.
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In its depiction of World War I, The Big Parade contrasted sharply with previous films like Rex Ingram’s romanticized The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and the out-and-out propaganda of D. W. Griffith’s Hearts of the World (1918). Vidor’s scenes of warfare are more realistic, if not unsparing. We see many soldiers die after being strafed by an enemy plane or shot by machine gunners. We also see a soldier strapped to a hospital bed, writhing in the throes of what was then called shell shock.
Vidor also gives us a soldier’s eye view of the war, all but ignoring the officer caste. His sympathy implicitly lies with the rank and file. Despite including several scenes of large crowds, Vidor mostly keeps the film at a human scale, focusing on the cooperation and conflicts between its main characters.
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Of special importance is the film’s rejection of nationalism and xenophobia. Jim drags himself into a shell hole to kill the wounded German soldier who has shot him, but when he sees how young and terrified the soldier is, he instead gives him a cigarette — just as he had shared cigarettes and food with Slim and Bull. This scene is a powerful assertion of our common humanity and a repudiation of chauvinist hatred.
Just as valuable, and unusual, is the film’s questioning of patriotism and war. In a desperate moment, Jim erupts, “Waiting! Orders! Mud! Blood! Stinking stiffs! What the hell do we get out of this war, anyway?” Vidor implicitly asks who benefits from war, but his own class position and social outlook prevent him from finding the answer. Capitalism and imperialism go unexamined in the film, and what remains is a petty-bourgeois humanist perspective.
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The Big Parade won the Photoplay Magazine Medal—the most significant American film award before the Oscars—for best film of 1925. Because of the film’s critical and commercial success, Vidor quickly supplanted Griffith as the leading “serious” director in Hollywood. He went on to direct significant films such as The Crowd (1928), Hallelujah! (1929) and Our Daily Bread (1934). Like The Big Parade, they examine the relationship between the individual and the mass and are grounded in a humanist idealism.
Vidor’s limited social critique, his continuing belief in the “better side” of capitalism, bolstered by his intense subjective idealism, prevents The Big Parade from developing a deeper criticism of war and patriotism. Nevertheless, the film began a tradition of movies with stronger anti-war messages, such as Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and G. W. Pabst’s Westfront 1918 (1930). This tradition later flowered in excellent films such as Jean Renoir’s La Grande Illusion (1937) and Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (1957).
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Official Hollywood today, for the most part, has bought into the American war drive, through propaganda efforts like Top Gun: Maverick (2022), Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and others. Such films degrade popular consciousness as the US government presides over genocide in Gaza, plots an invasion of Venezuela and prepares for a cataclysmic war with China. Despite its limitations, The Big Parade retains its relevance and artistic significance today.
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- The Big Parade is available for free at the Internet Archive
4. On eve of shutdown, Democrats plead for talks, while Trump, Republicans issue fascist attacks
As the US government barreled toward a Tuesday midnight partial shutdown, Democrats pleaded for negotiations, while President Donald Trump and the Republicans issued fascistic attacks on Democratic leaders and threatened to use a shutdown to carry out mass permanent layoffs of federal workers.
The shutdown takes place in the midst of Trump’s illegal deployment of troops to Portland and Memphis, in addition to Los Angeles and Washington D.C., and his speech to top military brass on Tuesday in which Trump said they would be called on to use lethal force against American citizens in cities across the country.
The Democrats and union leaders have avoided any mention of Trump’s rush to dictatorship. They have proposed no action to oppose either the police-military occupations or the plans to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and gut basic social services and agencies that regulate corporations and enforce occupational safety, public health and environmental standards.
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On Monday night, following a stalemated White House meeting on the looming shutdown with top Republican and Democratic congressional leaders, Trump posted on X and Truth Social an AI-generated video showing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero and a cartoon mustache. Next to him was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer talking at a podium, with mariachi music playing in the background.
The digitally altered Schumer said the Democrats had lost their voters “because of all of our woke, trans bulls***.” He continued: “so we need new voters, and if we give all these illegal aliens free healthcare, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us.”
This is a version of the fascist and antisemitic Great Replacement Theory, which claims that Jews are conspiring to replace white Christian Americans with non-white immigrants.
Schumer’s response to this fascist filth illustrates the impotent and feckless posture of the Democratic Party. He posted his own social media comment, saying on X: “If you think your shutdown is a joke, it just proves what we all know: You can’t negotiate. You can only throw tantrums.”
The Democrats’ prostration is matched by that of the trade union bureaucracy, which opposes any action—mass protests, strikes—to fight Trump’s drive to dictatorship and the ruling class assault on the social conditions of the working class. On Monday, American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) President Everett Kelley merely issued a statement urging bipartisan negotiations and compromise to avert a shutdown. AFGE, the largest federal workers’ union, covers 820,000 workers.
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There are indications the Democrats plan to end a shutdown by accepting a pledge by Republicans to negotiate on an extension of ACA tax credits after the government reopens, declaring that a “victory.” Last week the Wall Street Journal published an article under the headline: “Schumer Drives a Hard Bargain on Shutdown but Sees an Exit Ramp.” The Journal wrote: “In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Schumer projected confidence that he has an exit strategy in the event of a shutdown.” The newspaper quoted Schumer as saying, “Democrats are going to say, very simply, ‘Just come and sit down and talk to us and negotiate agreements, and you can end the shutdown.’”
5. Netanyahu pledges to violate Gaza “peace” plan just hours after its announcement
On Monday, US President Donald Trump announced a proposed “peace” agreement between Israel and Hamas that was hailed in the US media as a major breakthrough.
The New York Times promoted it in an editorial as a “promising” agreement that “contains the pillars of a just ceasefire, including an end to military attacks, the return of all hostages, and a Gaza free of Israeli occupation and Hamas governance.”
Despite the media cheerleading, the “peace” proposal was quickly exposed as a ridiculous fraud by the Israeli government. After having just stated his agreement to a document that states that “Israel will not occupy or annex Gaza,” Netanyahu published a video in Hebrew on Monday declaring that Israel would continue to occupy the Gaza Strip. Responding to calls for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, Netanyahu proclaimed, “No way, that’s not happening.”
Netanyahu said that Trump had stated that if “Hamas refuses [the agreement], he will give Israel full backing to complete the military operation and eliminate them.” Netanyahu reiterated that he will “not agree” to a Palestinian state, even though the US-Israeli “peace” plan calls for a “credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.”
Netanyahu’s remarks make clear the true content of the peace agreement. It is intended to allow the US media to claim that the US and Israeli governments are seeking “peace,” while placing the onus on Hamas for rejecting a US-Israeli peace plan. This, in turn, would create the most favorable conditions for the US-Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
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In his meeting with Netanyahu on Monday, Trump made it clear that unless Hamas accepted the surrender plan, he would double down on his support for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, saying, “Israel would have my full backing to finish the job of destroying the threat of Hamas.” As Trump reiterated on Tuesday, “We have one signature that we need, and that signature will pay in hell if they don’t sign.”
In reality, the deal, as outlined, would be an abject capitulation to the colonial domination of the Middle East. Under the proposal, Gaza would be governed by a “Board of Peace” that would be “headed and chaired by President Donald J. Trump” and include “Former [UK] Prime Minister Tony Blair.”
This proposal violates the right of the Palestinian people to national self-determination and would mark a return to the open colonial domination of the Middle East that prevailed in the 19th century. It would also require Hamas to completely disarm and give up control over Gaza. For Hamas to accept such an agreement would be an abject capitulation, and this is by design.
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The plan is designed to be rejected in order to clear the way for the actual US-Israeli plan to ethnically cleanse and annex Gaza, which has been the modus operandi of the Netanyahu government since the start of the onslaught on Gaza.
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A particularly foul role is being played by bourgeois nationalist governments in the Middle East and the broader region, including Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, which endorsed the deal and agreed to implement it.
In its editorial praising the US-Israeli “peace” plan, the New York Times called the US-dominated “Board of Peace” mere “bluster,” while the calls by “far-right members of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition” for the annexation of Gaza were “outrageous.” However “outrageous” such calls may be, they constitute the actual US-Israeli policy, which aims at the total annexation and ethnic cleansing of Gaza, as both Trump and Netanyahu have repeatedly made clear.
More than 55,000 Canada Post workers continued their nationwide strike for a sixth day Tuesday, as the Liberal government of Prime Minister Mark Carney presses forward with its drive to dismantle postal delivery as a public service under the banner of returning the Crown corporation to “sustainability” and profitability.
The strikers face a political struggle against the Liberal government and all corporate Canada, which back the demands of Canada Post management to the hilt because they correspond with the ruling class’ determination to destroy public services, increase worker-exploitation and impoverish the working class. Speaking to reporters in London, England on Saturday, Carney asserted that “significant changes” to Canada Post were urgently required and denounced the service as “not viable.” He complained that Canada Post “loses more than $10 million a day—$10,000,000 a day, day after day,” and insisted that “the situation needs to change.”
Striking postal workers must respond to the government’s declaration of war on their livelihoods by making their struggle the spearhead of a broader mass mobilization to defend all public services, decent-paying and secure jobs, and the right to strike. The context of the strike underscores that favourable conditions exist to develop such a movement, since all sections of workers face similar attacks, and militant struggles by flight attendants, college instructors in Ontario, and BC government employees have swept across the country in recent weeks.
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Workers on the picket lines speaking to the World Socialist Web Site voiced their outrage over the government’s repeated intervention on the side of management and rejected the push to return Canada Post to profitability on workers’ backs and by gutting services. A postal worker in Ottawa explained, “The mail is a public service. Imagine your house is on fire and the fire department says its not going to put the fire out because its not profitable!” Another worker with 20 years’ experience agreed, remarking, “It’s a service, not a for-profit organization.”
This eruption of the rank and file has quickly escalated into one of the most significant confrontations between Canadian workers and the state in decades. It threatens the stability of the recently elected Carney government as it launches its program of “austerity and investment,” which will entail slashing public services to the bone while funneling billions into military spending and corporate coffers through subsidies and bailouts. The strike also blows a hole in the bogus nationalist tub-thumping to promote “Team Canada” amid a roiling trade war launched by the Trump administration in the United States. In reality, the Canadian ruling class wants to inflict Trump-style policies, including savage austerity, strike bans and skyrocketing military budgets, on workers, to make them pay for the global capitalist crisis.
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The attack on Canada Post is not simply a war on postal workers. It is a declaration of war on the entire working class. Insiders such as Carleton University Professor Ian Lee, a former Canada Post executive, have openly called for the elimination of 40,000 jobs and the reduction of the corporation to a rump service restricted to servicing remote areas.
Workers must take the struggle into their own hands.
7. Texas A&M professor, dean and department head fired in far-right backlash
Across the United States, educators and public workers are increasingly finding themselves at the center of political witch-hunts. In the weeks following the assassination of far-right commentator and Trump ally Charlie Kirk, a wave of firings, suspensions and internal investigations has swept through schools and universities. Part of a coordinated effort to suppress dissent, the crackdown has targeted teachers, professors and students for any comments deemed unacceptable.
Nowhere is this more visible than in Texas, where more than 280 complaints have reportedly been filed against K-12 educators alone for alleged “disrespect” toward Kirk or his political legacy.
At Texas A&M University, senior English lecturer Melissa McCoul was dismissed in early September after a student filmed her referencing gender identity in a children’s literature course. The video captures audio of a student objecting to McCoul teaching that there are more than two genders. The student claims that McCoul’s lesson was in violation of Trump’s executive order and her religious beliefs. McCoul responds that she has a right to teach the lesson and that the student also has a right to leave the classroom.
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After spreading on social media, the recording of McCoul sparked backlash from Republican lawmakers and calls for investigations and even a response from the US Department of Justice. The Texas A&M System chancellor swiftly released a statement pledging to discipline the professor. Soon after McCoul was fired, College of Arts and Sciences Dean Mark Zoran and department head Emily Johansen, who oversaw McCoul’s course, were also removed, for allegedly approving plans to teach material that was inconsistent with the published course description.
Within 48 hours of the audio from McCoul’s course being posted, a Republican state representative framed the lesson as “indoctrination” and Governor Greg Abbott publicly called for her to be fired. University officials claimed the course material diverged from the official syllabus, but McCoul and her defenders state she has taught the course with similar material for years.
Not long after, at Texas State University, tenured history professor Tom Alter was fired after speaking at a socialism conference where he made remarks critical of US capitalism and imperialism. Though no threats were made, and no laws broken, the university accused him of promoting “extremism” incompatible with his role. Alter is now suing the university, alleging wrongful termination and violation of his First Amendment rights.
Also at Texas State, a student was expelled for mimicking Kirk’s assassination at a campus vigil. While the act was tasteless and widely condemned, civil liberties advocates argue that it did not amount to a violent threat—and that expulsion is a disproportionate punishment for expressive behavior, however offensive.
Similar incidents are playing out across the country:
In Florida, a teacher was suspended for posting “I don’t mourn fascists” on a private Instagram story.
In California, a counselor was placed under review for sharing a TikTok satirizing media coverage of Kirk’s death.
In Ohio, a paraprofessional was reprimanded for wearing a pin that read, “Teach the Truth,” interpreted by some as a political statement.
Since Kirk’s high-profile death at a campus speaking event on September 10, state officials and right-wing groups have moved swiftly to elevate him to a near-mythic status. Statues are being erected. Scholarships are being renamed. Memorial bills are being introduced in state legislatures.
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Texas, long a political bellwether of reaction, has become a focal point in this new crackdown.
In Houston, a high school government teacher was suspended after liking a Facebook post that referred to Kirk as a “reactionary provocateur.” In Austin, a middle school librarian was removed from her position after sharing a New York Times article critical of Kirk’s influence on education policy. In Dallas, an art teacher was dismissed outright for posting a meme that read, “Charlie Kirk is not my hero.”
In most cases, these educators were acting in their personal capacity—outside school hours, on personal accounts, speaking to personal audiences. Yet their speech is being treated as a violation of professional standards, with some districts citing “insensitivity,” “unprofessionalism,” or “disrespect for national grief.”
The result is a widespread chilling effect. Teachers are deleting social media accounts. Professors are canceling public appearances, while campus speech narrows out of fear.
8. Online meeting in Sri Lanka: Oppose restructuring of the CEB! Defend CEB employees’ struggle!
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the Collective of Workers Action Committees (CWAC) in Sri Lanka are holding an online public meeting on Saturday, October 4 at 7:00 p.m. We call on workers and youth to attend and discuss the program and action required to stop the restructuring of the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) and to defend employees’ rights.
On September 21, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake imposed essential service orders banning CEB employees from intensifying their four-week work-to-rule and two-day sick leave campaign against the restructuring of this vital state-owned enterprise.
The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government began restructuring the CEB in early September as part of its International Monetary Fund (IMF)-dictated program. It plans to break up the CEB into four government-owned companies, paving the way for their eventual privatization and threatening workers’ jobs, wages and previously won working conditions and rights. The trade unions have called protests to quell workers’ opposition and presented 12 demands. CEB management and the government have rejected these demands.
The CEB workers’ fight to defend their rights has become a focal point in the struggle to defeat the Dissanayake government’s IMF program. The JVP/NPP regime wants to suppress the resistance of electricity workers in order to intensify the restructuring and then privatize hundreds of other state-owned enterprises (SOEs), destroying the jobs, wages and other rights of workers in those institutions.
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The SEP has called on workers to reject the political manoeuvres and betrayals of the trade union bureaucracies by taking the struggle into their own hands, through the building of independent action committees and fighting IMF austerity with an international socialist program. We call on all workers and young people to attend our Zoom meeting this Saturday and discuss these vital questions.
In a display of courage and international solidarity, dockworkers in the Italian port city of Genoa last Saturday blocked the loading of cargo bound for Israel aboard the Zim Virginia. The huge container ship is operated by the Israeli shipping giant ZIM Integrated Shipping Services.
Their action, taken amid one of the largest anti-genocide demonstrations in Italy in recent memory, is a sign that the working class can and must be mobilized as the central force against genocide and dictatorship.
More than 25,000 people, according to police estimates, and many more, according to organizers, flooded the streets of Genoa on Saturday evening in support of the Global Sumud Flotilla, demanding the opening of humanitarian corridors into Gaza, an end to arms shipments to Israel and an immediate halt to the genocide. The march, which began outside the headquarters of Music for Peace, the NGO coordinating the flotilla’s mission, quickly took on an explosive character.
Word spread through the crowd that a ship belonging to ZIM, Israel’s national carrier, was preparing to load 10 containers classified as dangerous goods—reportedly including explosives—just hours before an international assembly of the Ports Coordination Against the War, which had called for an embargo on Israeli shipping.
Responding immediately, around a thousand demonstrators broke off from the main march to support the Collettivo Autonomo Lavoratori Portuali (CALP), the Autonomous Collective of Port Workers. CALP dockworkers declared a spontaneous strike, refusing to load or unload the ZIM ship. Faced with mounting pressure from workers and protesters, police authorities were forced to halt the loading operation and prevent the ship’s departure.
The example quickly spread....
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The Genoa dockworkers’ defiance follows massive demonstrations in Italy on September 22, when tens of thousands of workers and youth took to the streets in more than 75 cities under the slogan “Let’s Block Everything.” It is part of a broader wave of resistance sweeping across Europe’s ports. It demonstrates the immense potential power of the working class to obstruct the machinery of war. Yet it also exposes the vulnerabilities of such struggles in their current form.
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Meanwhile, Israel has sought to brand the Global Sumud Flotilla as a terrorist operation, claiming a “direct link between the Flotilla and Hamas” and presenting letters, photos and names as supposed evidence. This is part of a broader campaign to criminalize humanitarian aid and delegitimize international solidarity with Gaza.
Meloni’s response to the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is now approaching Gaza under threat of direct Israeli military intervention, underscores this reality. “The flotilla must stop or it will place peace at risk,” she declared. She argued that attempts to breach the blockade would “give a pretext to prevent peace.”
This grotesque inversion of reality shifts the blame for genocide from its perpetrators to those trying to deliver food and medicine to a besieged population. The Israeli navy, including its elite Shayetet 13 commando unit, is reportedly preparing to board, seize or even sink the flotilla’s ships—acts of piracy and war crimes openly condoned by imperialist governments. Italy’s own navy has sought to undermine the mission by offering a “safe exit” to activists willing to abandon the effort, an act the organizers rightly denounced as sabotage.
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The blockade of the Zim Virginia is a commendable initial step. But it must be followed with solidarity actions by port workers across Europe and the world. ZIM and other shipping companies will simply reroute their cargo through other ports, unless dockworker actions are coordinated internationally and backed by a broader mobilization of the working class.
What is urgently needed is the formation of independent rank-and-file committees in every port, workplace, and industry—committees that break decisively from the pro-capitalist trade union bureaucracies and nationalist politics of the official “left.” These committees must coordinate their actions across borders and sectors, preparing the ground for a general strike against the war.
Such a strike cannot be a mere one- or two-day protest but the first step toward confronting the capitalist system itself which is driving the world to the abyss. The slaughter in Gaza will continue, regardless of how many ships are blocked or how many rallies are held, until a powerful mass movement of the working class challenges the corporate oligarchy whose interests lie behind imperialist war.
10. Australian government extends use of Nauru as a refugee prison
Without any prior public notification or scrutiny, the Australian Labor government has just extended a contract for the running of an asylum seeker prison on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru until at least 2027.
The notorious detention camp, which the Albanese government reopened in 2023, is currently incarcerating—many effectively indefinitely—105 male asylum seekers who had tried to reach Australia by boat.
Every aspect of the latest extension of the prison contract underscores Labor’s brutal treatment of asylum seekers, its flouting of international refugee law and its use of Nauru, the third smallest state in the world, as a neo-colonial dumping ground.
MTC Australia, a subsidiary of one of America’s largest private prison operators, the Management and Training Corporation, has provided “garrison, transferee arrivals and reception services” on the island since 2022, when it was initially contracted for two months for $47 million.
The latest contract extension to 2027 takes MTC’s total remuneration to at least $787 million, a figure that will rise, under the terms of the deal, if more refugees are forcibly transported to Nauru.
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The Nauru prison camp contract extension is on top of Labor’s pact, unveiled last month, to pay Nauru’s government more than $408 million upfront to become a dumping ground—initially for more than 350 former immigration detainees—plus almost $70 million per year to supposedly cover the costs of their as yet unknown accommodation and living arrangements.
Nauru, with a population of around 12,000 people, was impoverished by decades of phosphate mining under British, Australian and New Zealand colonial rule before nominal independence was granted in 1968. The mining has left about 80 percent of the small island uninhabitable and rising sea levels caused by global climate change are forecast to force 90 percent of its residents to relocate.
Labor’s moves are in line with the draconian measures being taken by governments globally, now spearheaded by the mass detentions and deportations of workers by the fascistic Trump administration in the US. Governments are demonising the record numbers of people worldwide fleeing war, persecution and impoverishment—making them scapegoats for the worsening domestic social conditions being created by the capitalist profit system.
Earlier this month, in a little-reported gathering in London, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke joined his counterparts from the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand in issuing a “Common Principles of Return” statement that pledged their “collective leadership and unity” in this offensive.
The “Five Eyes” ministerial statement declared that “a fundamental principle of the global migration system” is that states “have a sovereign right to determine which foreign nationals may enter and which may remain within their respective borders” and “the right to effect removal through enforced means.”
That is a flagrant violation of the post-World War II 1951 international Refugee Convention, which enshrined the right to flee persecution and an obligation on nation states not to repel or remove asylum seekers to face possible death or harm—the principle known as “non-refoulement.”
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On every continent, the ruling class and its political and trade union servants are trying to divert the growing discontent with plunging living conditions away from the real source, which lies in the ever-greater accumulation of wealth by the billionaires and the capitalist profit system itself.
Everywhere, the media and political establishments are seeking to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment, nationalism and patriotism to divide the working class globally, and prepare for war. Against this barbaric agenda, workers and young people must defend the basic democratic right of people to live and work wherever they choose, with full social and citizenship rights.
11. New Zealand government whitewashes Israel’s genocide in Gaza
In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 26, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters whitewashed Israel’s genocide in Gaza and said his government would not join other countries in recognizing Palestinian statehood.
As the World Socialist Web Site explained, the “recognition” of Palestine by Australia, Canada, the UK and others is a fraud, aimed at covering up the fact that these imperialist powers have spent two years defending Israel’s actions and providing it with material support to destroy the Gaza Strip and massacre its people.
New Zealand’s right-wing coalition government opted against recognition, however, not because of its cynical and empty character, but in order to more demonstratively align itself with the Zionist regime and the Trump administration.
NZ’s ruling class is strengthening its alliance with US imperialism, which is preparing for war against China, ramping up the US-NATO war against Russia and seeking to reimpose direct colonial rule in the Middle East. The Gaza genocide is one component of this global war for the redivision of the world.
Wellington still claims to want a “two state” solution for Israel/Palestine, but Peters told the UN that “recognizing Palestine now will likely prove counterproductive” because Hamas would portray it as a “victory.” Echoing Israel’s pretext for its genocide—that Hamas must be destroyed—Peters said the group must “have no place in any future Palestinian state. They know only hate.”
By contrast, Peters mildly criticized the Israeli military’s actions as a “grossly disproportionate” response to Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023. In fact, Israel has systematically killed, maimed and starved hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed most structures in the Gaza Strip, with the aim of driving out its population.
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The opposition Labour Party and its allies, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, denounced the government’s position at the UN. Labour leader Chris Hipkins hypocritically said the government “is turning its back on Palestine, when we see an unfolding genocide there. I think New Zealanders were hoping that our government would take a principled position and recognize Palestine, as our friends in Australia, the UK and Canada have all done.”
This is utterly hypocritical. Hipkins’ Labour government supported Israel’s assault on Gaza when it was still in office at the end of 2023. The governments hailed as “principled” models by Hipkins have all sought to suppress protests against the genocide, while sending weapons and providing diplomatic cover for Israel.
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Protests are continuing internationally and in New Zealand against the genocide. But this movement remains politically subordinated to capitalist parties and their pseudo-left supporters, which insist that nothing can be done except appealing to the same governments responsible for funding and supporting Israel to change their position, sanction the Netanyahu government and recognize Palestine.
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In response to the historic global economic crisis, the ruling class is plunging the Middle East and the entire world into war and genocide. The international working class must respond by taking up the fight for socialism, to end the capitalist profit system and its division of the world into rival nation states, which is the source of war.
As a critical part of this struggle, workers in every country, including New Zealand, must build rank-and-file committees—independent of the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy—to organise a campaign of anti-war strikes and to force an end to the alliance with the US, stop all support for Israel and halt all military spending.
The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International), unanimously adopted this document at its founding congress on June 13–15, 2025. It traces the central historical experiences of the working class and Marxist movement in the 20th and 21st centuries, and establishes the principled foundations for the building of the Trotskyist movement in Turkey and throughout the region.
New sections of the document will be published in coming days. Here is a link that includes the newest sections of a total of 33 sections:
3. The Foundation of Modern Turkey, the Communist International and the TKP
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.
