Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded its 2025 Peace Prize to the leader of Venezuela’s far-right opposition, Maria Corina Machado, an event that is as significant as it is sinister.
The fascist minions of Donald Trump reacted with petty anger over the Norwegian committee’s passing over the US president. The White House issued an initial statement charging that the committee “proved they place politics over peace” in passing over Trump, whom they credited with “the heart of a humanitarian.”
With his record of arming, financing and politically supporting the Gaza genocide and bombing Iranian nuclear facilities, not to mention his murder of unarmed civilians on small boats in the southern Caribbean, Trump was a bit much for even the Nobel committee to swallow. But if they couldn’t give the award to the US organ grinder, they did choose one of his able monkeys in the person of Machado.
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The Norwegian Nobel Committee described Machado as “a brave and committed champion of peace... a woman who keeps the flame of democracy burning amid a growing darkness.” Not surprisingly, AI detector ZeroGPT concludes this blather and much of the rest of the statement was copy-pasted from ChatGPT.
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At the very least, the prize to Machado is an endorsement by powerful sections of the European ruling elite of a war for regime change with all its potential for opening a new front in the emerging third world war. France’s embattled 'president of the rich,” Emmanuel Macron, as representative of the transatlantic establishment, declared Machado a “fighter for liberation.” What a farce!
In its statement, the Nobel Committee laments a global trend which has seen the “rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarization” But it somehow neglects to mention that the foremost example of this trend is Machado's paymaster and controller, the Trump administration.
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Recently, Machado went on Fox News to endorse the ongoing US military buildup in the Caribbean and extrajudicial massacres of fishermen accused without evidence of working for cartels allegedly tied to Maduro.
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The Pentagon has now sunk at least five small vessels killing at least 21 civilians in the southern Caribbean, while amassing a significant naval fleet, numerous warplanes and 4,500 sailors and troops off Venezuela’s shores. These are the first recognized US military attacks on Latin America and the largest military deployment there since the 1989 invasion of Panama that left hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians dead to capture the former US ally and dictator Manuel Noriega, also on the pretext of drug charges.
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Beyond her support for imperialist intervention, the embrace of Machado’s fascist political pedigree—like the thunderous acclamations given to fascist Argentine president Javier Milei—signifies an endorsement by the “respectable” layers of the world oligarchy of a return in Latin America to the regime of terror created under the US-backed dictatorships that seized power across the region in the latter half of the 20th century.
Alongside figures like Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Argentina’s Milei, Machado is a signatory of the “Madrid Forum” charter launched by the fascistic Spanish party VOX, which along with the AfD in Germany she counts among her closest allies.
A defender of “free market” policies, above all the privatization of the state oil company PDVSA, whose public ownership has been upheld by a wide spectrum of bourgeois parties since the 1970s, Machado has endorsed Milei’s economic program of “shock therapy” in which “freedom” means the liberation of corporations to eliminate social spending and exploit the working class without any restrictions or regulations.
The scion of a Venezuelan oligarchic dynasty, her far-right politics have always been animated by hatred of the working class and of any challenge to social inequality. On this basis, she has supported crippling US sanctions that by 2020 were estimated to have caused some 100,000 excess deaths, while forcing millions to flee the country. She has likewise remained silent on the punitive anti-immigrant policies pursued by the Trump administration against hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who sought refuge in the US.
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The question raised most sharply by the Nobel Peace Prize to Machado is which social force and under what program can the threat of fascism and war be stopped.
The bourgeois nationalist governments led by Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela carried out limited nationalizations and social assistance programs and sought better terms from US imperialism.
However, with the aid of their Stalinist, Social Democratic and Pabloite hangers-on, these governments have fostered illusions that sustainable social and democratic gains could be secured for workers and poor peasants and imperialist oppression opposed on the basis of a nationalist program without overthrowing capitalism.
As in Chile, where the 1973 Pinochet coup overthrew the left nationalist President Salvador Allende, and in numerous other countries, such illusions have only served to disarm workers politically and physically before the turn by the ruling elites to fascist dictatorship.
It is necessary to cut through the lying propaganda of “democracy” and “human rights” and reveal the ugly reality of bourgeois politics. The working class must reject with contempt the cynical use of the Nobel Prize to sanctify imperialist reaction. Only the unity of workers in Venezuela, with those of the rest of Latin America, the United States, and internationally—armed with a socialist and revolutionary perspective—can halt the march to world war and fascist dictatorship, and open the way to genuine peace, democracy and social equality.
The anointment of Machado by imperialism is, above all, a warning: the ruling class is preparing for new crimes on a world scale. The answer must be the independent mobilization of the international working class, made conscious of its strength and its historic tasks.
At 7:45 a.m. Central Time Friday, a massive explosion tore through the Accurate Energetic Systems (AES) munitions plant in Bucksnort, Tennessee, killing or injuring more than a score of workers, including 19 who are still listed as missing. Describing the incident as a “mass detonation,” local officials have confirmed that nineteen employees are missing and feared dead, roughly one quarter of the company’s workforce.
Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis said the scene was one of utter devastation. “There’s nothing to describe. It’s gone,” he told reporters. “We are missing 19 souls right now. It’s one of the most devastating situations I’ve been on in my career,” he said in remarks to the New York Times.
The blast leveled at least one structure, believed to be Building Six of the company’s eight-building facility, and was so powerful that it rattled homes more than a dozen miles away and sent a plume of smoke large enough to appear on the radar of a Nashville television station.
Witnesses described the terror that swept through the rural community located fifty miles southwest of Nashville. Gentry Stover, who lives nearby, told Associated Press the concussion shook him awake: “I thought the house had collapsed with me inside of it. I live very close to Accurate and realized about 30 seconds after I woke up that it had to have been that.”
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Authorities said the cause of the explosion remains under investigation. The FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are on site, and Sheriff Davis cautioned that reaching the center of the wreckage could take days. “It wouldn’t surprise me at all if we’re here next week,” he said.
Accurate Energetic Systems is a privately held explosives manufacturer that operates on a 1,300-acre site with eight production buildings. The company produces and tests high-energy materials including RDX (cyclonite), TNT, and PBXN-series military explosives for the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and commercial demolition clients. AES employs roughly 75 workers and is one of the few sources of stable employment in the economically depressed rural counties west of Nashville.
This is the second deadly explosion at the same site in just over a decade. In April 2014, another blast destroyed a building used to manufacture ammunition components, killing one worker and critically injuring three others. That facility was then operated by Rio Ammunition, one of several defense contractors that have worked on the property.
Records from the Tennessee Occupational Safety and Health Administration (TOSHA) show that AES was cited for five serious violations in 2019 after multiple employees suffered seizure events while working with RDX powder. Investigators determined that the workers experienced central nervous system impairment after drying and sifting the compound without adequate protective gear. Wipe samples from employees’ skin and break room surfaces tested positive for RDX residue, proving exposure through absorption and ingestion.
RDX (cyclonite) is a potent neurotoxin. The National Center for Biotechnology Information reports that exposure can cause “convulsions and unconsciousness, accompanied by headache, dizziness, and vomiting,” while chronic exposure can damage the liver and kidneys.
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The Tennessee explosion comes only days after a blast at Chevron’s El Segundo refinery in California. As the World Socialist Web Site reported, such disasters are “virtually daily occurrences in America,” with fatal explosions, fires, and toxic exposures killing workers in Texas, Louisiana, Colorado, and Nebraska in recent months. These are “not accidents in any meaningful sense,” the WSWS explained, but “social crimes, predictable outcomes of a deregulated, profit-driven system that treats human lives as expendable.”
The federal government shutdown, which began on October 1, 2025, after Congress failed to pass a funding bill, has paralyzed workplace safety enforcement across the country. Under its contingency plan, the Department of Labor has furloughed most of its staff, leaving the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) with only 460 of its 1,664 employees on duty to respond to “life-and-property” emergencies. All routine inspections, outreach, and training have been suspended, according to Engineering News-Record.
Compounding this paralysis, the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2026 budget proposal would cut nearly $50 million from OSHA and eliminate 223 positions, further eroding what little oversight remains. With three-quarters of OSHA’s workforce sidelined and deeper cuts planned, thousands of high-risk worksites now operate with no federal safety oversight. The explosion in Tennessee exposes the deadly consequences of this government-engineered collapse of regulation.
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The dead and missing in Tennessee join the thousands of workers killed each year in what can only be described as America’s industrial slaughterhouse. Their deaths were preventable. Every ignored warning, every vacated violation, and every political concession to the corporate elite paved the way for this tragedy.
3. Italian actress Claudia Cardinale and European cinema of the 1960s
Italian actress Claudia Cardinale died September 23 at her home in France. Cardinale was one of the most prominent performers of the 1960s and 1970s, in Italian and European cinema above all. For her beauty, intelligence and personal strength, she was sought out by many directors.
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Cardinale writes in her autobiography Mes étoiles [My Stars], that “the chance to meet extraordinary people, who leave such an impression on you that they change your life, your ambitions, your dreams, people you admire—that’s something. I don’t deserve any credit. Fate has often decided for me.”
It wasn’t fate, in any mystical sense. And, of course, she’s being too modest, she does deserve some credit. But it is true that it was not merely Cardinale’s undeniable personal appeal that helped her to become a central figure in a number of important, insightful films.
The point is, first of all, that there were important, insightful films in which to act. Cardinale joined the Italian and European film industry in the late 1950s, less than 15 years after the end of World War II and the defeat of Italian and German fascism. A general hostility to the ruling classes prevailed, ruling classes that had either openly or tacitly embraced brutal dictatorship and war. Socialism, “humanism,” anti-authoritarianism and various forms of critique of the existing society permeated the cinema world. Along with that, inevitably, the presence of the working class or the lower orders in general in films was far more pronounced than it is today....
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...In any event, Claudia Cardinale remains a great presence in world cinema. She rejected the slightest nostalgia in her memoir and claimed to love, as she should have, “the present more than any other time,” but she could not help remarking that
I would have many reasons to look back; the past has been glorious. I still receive letters from young people, dazzled by a role, a character, and who ask for my address, as if I were the young actress who moved them. I take their tribute for what it is, an expression of their admiration for a cinema that is no more and that they miss.
4. Union apparatus does nothing as Trump launches new wave of mass firings
The Trump administration has begun issuing reductions-in-force (RIF) notices to federal employees, marking a decisive escalation in its use of the shutdown to impose structural cuts on government services and seize personal control over the government. Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought declared on X, “The RIFs have begun,” and an OMB spokesperson confirmed that the layoffs would be “substantial.”
Over 4,000 workers are impacted by the initial firings. According to a court filing Friday in response to a lawsuit by federal unions, these include:
Department of Commerce: 315 workers
Department of Education: 466 workers
Department of Energy: 187 workers
Department of Health and Human Services: “between 1100 and 1200” workers
Department of Housing and Human Development: 442 workers
Department of Homeland Security: 176 workers
Department of the Treasury: 1446 workers
In addition, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) announced Thursday that civilian, non-law enforcement would see the second straight year of double-digit healthcare premium rate hikes in 2026. The government is also proposing a 1 percent pay increase next year for the same employee category.
The mass firings demonstrate that the target of Trump’s bid for dictatorship is the working class. As this is occurring, he has sent National Guard troops to occupy Chicago and Portland and support ICE operations. The White House is reportedly in very advanced talks to invoke the Insurrection Act, a move which would abolish civilian rule in the parts of the country to which the Act is applied.
Federal judges have temporarily blocked his deployments; the White House has responded by threatening to ignore the rulings and is threatening the arrest of mayors in cities targeted with occupation. Stephen Miller, the fascist architect of Trump’s pseudo-legal attacks on the Constitution, said during an interview with CNN that the president had “plenary authority” to militarily occupy US cities. Miller’s invocation of the “Fuhrer principle” seeks to place Trump above constitutional constraints.
Under these conditions, federal workers and the entire working class are facing an unprecedented assault on jobs, working conditions, and democratic rights—one that can only be met by mass mobilization of the working class to halt the destruction of social services and block the drift to dictatorship.
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Faced with this crisis, the union apparatus has done virtually nothing to oppose the administration’s illegal actions and are instead attempting to chloroform workers to the danger. The AFL-CIO federation responded to the announcement by tweeting: “America’s unions will see you in court.”
This is absurd given that Trump, who is deliberately seeking to overthrow the Constitution, is not playing within any legal framework. Indeed, the reductions-in-force began Friday even though a federal judge is currently considering the unions’ filing for a temporary restraining order against them.
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The Democrats’ demands for the partial restoration of Medicaid cuts is entirely performative, aimed at corralling a developing movement against Trump that might grow out of their control. At the end of the day, the Democrats are content with Trump’s cuts so long as he continues to wage war in Ukraine.
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The bureaucrats cannot be permitted to immobilize the working class. Trump’s coup cannot be blocked by lawsuits and phone calls. It can only be stopped through the independent action of the working class. Such a mobilization must be built independently of the Democrats and the trade union bureaucracy, which either refuse to act or increasingly defend elements of Trump’s agenda.
Tuesday’s meeting between US President Donald Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney was revealing in two respects.
First, Carney’s effusive praise of the would-be US dictator underscored that the Canadian bourgeoisie’s conflict with Trump is solely about defending its own predatory profit and geopolitical interests. Not only is it indifferent to and ready to collaborate in Trump’s evisceration of democratic rights. As highlighted by the systematic assault on the right-to-strike and the morphing of the official opposition Conservatives into a far-right party, it is itself turning to authoritarian methods of rule and fascist reaction.
Second, Trump’s repeated threat to make Canada the 51st US state—coupled with his declaration about a natural “conflict” between the two erstwhile allies—speaks to the sharp deterioration in inter-state relations amid a rapidly escalating scramble among the imperialist powers to redivide the world and seize control of resources, markets, production networks and strategic territories through trade war, aggression and global war.
Carney was visiting the White House for the second time in less than six months. But he left without any indication that an agreement will soon be reached to resolve the ongoing trade war between what were arguably the two closest imperialist allies for much of the last century.
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Coming from Carney, the former central banker and carefully selected political manager of the affairs of Canada’s financial oligarchy, the praise of Trump’s “resolve” sends an unmistakable signal. As he rides roughshod over legal norms, rounds up immigrants en masse, and threatens political opponents with vicious repression, Trump and the dictatorial regime he is establishing serve as models for what Canada’s corporate elite is pushing for.
During his first six months in office, Carney has already moved to impose Trump-style policies with his massive hike in military spending, pledge to impose a new round of public spending “austerity,” and criminalization of the Air Canada flight attendants’ strike.
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The Canadian ruling class has been rattled by Trump’s aggressive implementation of “America First” policies, not least because since the eruption of the Second World War it has used its close alliance with Washington to assert its own global imperialist interests. Even now, Ottawa’s preferred course of action is to prevail on Trump and his fascist cabal to duly recognize Canada’s “right and prerogatives” as America’s junior partner so that the continent’s twin imperialist powers can confront Russia, China and other rivals together. Hence Carney’s attempts to flatter Trump, his insistence that, in spite of everything, Canada and the US share “common interests,” and his offer of $1 trillion in Canadian investment in the US over the next five years.
On the domestic front, the Canadian ruling class has exploited Trump’s trade war and annexation threats to adopt large chunks of the class-war agenda that he is pursuing in the US. This has been accompanied by a dramatic lurch to the right in official politics, as Carney has sought to distance himself from his “centrist” predecessor Justin Trudeau by embracing many policies long demanded by the Conservative right, like oil pipelines, business deregulation and massive social spending cuts in the name of austerity.
The Carney government’s “austerity and investment” plan, set to be expanded in early November with the tabling of a new budget, aims to hike military spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2034, spur the expansion of Canada’s military-industrial base, slash spending on healthcare and social programs, and boost incentives for the financial oligarchy and big business to generate profits through investments. A foretaste of the conditions which Carney and Co. plan for the working class is illustrated by the fate facing 55,000 Canada Post workers. The government is backing the enforcement of a management-dictated restructuring plan that would eliminate tens of thousands of secure jobs, expand the use of gig work, and set the standard for the gutting of all public services so they prioritize profit generation.
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The tensions unleashed by Trump’s drive to annex Canada and big business’ attempt to appease him are exacerbating deep-rooted regional frictions within the Canadian bourgeoisie. Far-right Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, whose province depends heavily on oil and energy exports south, has welcomed Carney’s more conciliatory policy towards Trump compared to Trudeau. Speaking to the BMO Eurasia Group conference Wednesday, she said, “I never thought ‘elbows up’ was going to get us to a deal with this particular president, and I think that (Carney’s) beginning to see that … putting some of the credits in the bank account is going to get us a lot further.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who heads the province where Canada’s auto industry is based, wants a more confrontational response. Warning that Trump would not “annihilate manufacturing in Ontario,” he demanded that Canada hit Trump “back twice as hard” in the absence of a deal to end auto tariffs.
Workers should not take sides in these squabbles, which ultimately boil down to tactical differences over how best to defend the interests of competing and often hostile factions of Canadian capital. Workers know from bitter experience that, irrespective of their differences over how to handle Trump, Smith and Ford enforce no less ruthless attacks on the working class of their respective provinces. The same could be said of Francois Legault and his right-wing, “national-autonomist” CAQ government in Quebec.
The fraud of “Team Canada” united against Trump is underscored by the brutal class war ongoing within Canada itself. Over the past 15 months, the Liberal government has repeatedly outlawed strikes by workers using draconian powers in the Canada Labour Code. Currently, over 100,000 workers are on strike across the country, from the postal workers, to Alberta teachers, British Columbia government employees and Ontario college support staff. All are demanding major improvements in pay and job protection, as social inequality and poverty skyrocket.
The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) leadership’s Thursday evening announcement that it is unilaterally shutting down our nationwide strike and replacing it with toothless rotating strikes is a capitulation of historic proportions. Without so much as a consultative vote, the National Executive Board, just a day after meeting behind closed doors with the very government minister who wants to destroy our jobs, has ordered 55,000 postal workers to stand down in the face of the Carney government’s ruthless restructuring plan.
This betrayal threatens the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs, the shuttering of nearly 500 rural and suburban post offices, and the elimination of daily home mail delivery. But it threatens much more than the postal service, since the government is using us as a precedent for the kinds of attacks it wants to implement across the board. This is why all workers must come to our defense.
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The only reason a full strike was sanctioned at all was because postal workers in Atlantic Canada and Manitoba took matters into their own hands. When Minister of Government Transformation, Public Works and Procurement Joël Lightbound announced the Carney government’s restructuring plan on September 25, workers walked off the job spontaneously. The CUPW apparatus was terrified of losing control. It called a nationwide strike, not to mobilize our strength, but to contain and defuse it. And now, just two weeks later, they have moved to shut the strike down.
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We say enough! Postal workers must countermand this sabotage. This requires making our national strike the starting point for a broader mobilization of all logistics workers and the working class as a whole to defend the right to strike, public services, and good-paying, secure jobs for all, and to establish for workers’ control over the use of AI and other new technologies, so as to ensure they are used for the betterment of the population, not maximizing profits and workers’ exploitation.
To build this movement, we must take the fight into our own hands through the expansion of the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee. We must break out of the state-regulated collective bargaining system, and wage our struggle as a political class struggle, mobilizing the working class behind us in defense of public services and worker rights, and against austerity and war.
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The strike at Canada Post is not an isolated labor dispute. It is part of a broader class confrontation.
Carney and the Liberals are determined to make postal workers an example—to prove that no section of workers can resist the program of austerity and militarism. Billions are being poured into the military, subsidies for corporations and preparations for imperialist wars. To pay for this, the ruling class insists that tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, from the post office to healthcare and education, must be destroyed.
The union leadership’s appeals to the NDP, Bloc Québécois, and “sympathetic” politicians are a dead end. These parties are fully committed to the capitalist order. The NDP, in particular, has a long record of supporting Liberal governments that implement austerity, Canadian imperialism’s wars, and back-to-work laws.
Postal workers must repudiate any orientation to the political establishment, fighting instead to develop a mass movement with workers throughout the logistics sector and beyond on the basis of a socialist program that places human need above private profit.
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Postal workers must respond decisively. We cannot allow our struggle to be strangled by a CUPW bureaucracy tied hand and foot to the Liberals and the Canadian Labour Congress. We must build a new leadership from below.
Time and again, it has been the independent action of rank-and-file workers—not the union leadership—that has pushed the struggle forward. Last fall, it was militant picketing that showed the power of shutting down Canada Post. Last month, it was spontaneous walkouts that ignited the nationwide strike.
The lesson is clear: if we leave the struggle in the hands of the CUPW bureaucracy, we will suffer defeat after defeat. The only way forward is to take matters into our own hands through new organizations built from below.
7. Top military brass intensifies Germany’s war preparations against Russia
With the appointment of Lieutenant General Christian Freuding as the new Inspector of the Army, the highest-ranking officer of the military brass, the German government has taken another step in its aggressive rearmament and war preparations.
Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (Social Democratic Party, SPD) praised Freuding as the “general of the new era” and the “head of German Ukraine policy.” Freuding represents a new generation of officers who are not merely ready but eager to wage war. His appointment comes at a time when the German and European bourgeoisie are rapidly preparing for a major conflict—against Russia abroad and against their own population at home.
This development parallels that in the United States....
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The German cabinet recently adopted the Military Security Act, granting the army sweeping powers for deployment at home. It authorizes not only the use of armed drones but also expands soldiers’ authority to carry out searches, arrests and other measures against civilians. Recent exercises, such as those held in Hamburg, show that the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) are already training for operations inside the country—a development that like the preparations for war against Russia recalls the darkest chapters of German history.
Freuding himself personifies this new, aggressive course. His first order of the day reads like a document from Hitler’s Wehrmacht command before 1939:
Demanding tasks lie ahead of us. We must further improve our operational readiness. We want to finally achieve full materiel equipment. We must also grow in personnel. … We will establish new units and major formations—first and foremost our 45th Armored Brigade in Lithuania. … We will immediately develop and expand urgently needed capabilities, such as combat with and against drones. … The enemy will not wait for our “ready” report.
He continues, “I want to work for an army that is ready to fight, that prevails, that wins.”
This militaristic language is no accident. It reflects the mentality of an officer corps that openly speaks of an “enemy” and aims to transform the Bundeswehr into a “combat-ready army.” Freuding’s task is the practical implementation of Germany’s war strategy against Russia—including the deployment of an armored brigade in Lithuania, directly on Russia’s border.
Previously, Freuding headed the Ukraine Situation Center in the Defense Ministry and is regarded as an architect of Germany’s military support for Kiev. On May 9—Victory Day marking the Red Army’s defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945—he was photographed shaking hands with Ukrainian neo-Nazi commander Oleg Romanov, who leads the fascist “Paskuda” unit within the Ukrainian armed forces. That Freuding chose this day to associate himself with such forces was a deliberate provocation, symbolizing the continuity of German militarism—the ideological and political link to those who fought alongside Hitler’s Wehrmacht against the Soviet Union.
Freuding’s talk of “combat” and “victory” ties directly to the worst traditions of German imperialism. In both world wars, Berlin’s central aims were the domination of Eastern Europe, control over resource-rich Ukraine, and the subjugation of Russia. Today, this same geopolitical madness is being pursued under the slogans of “freedom” and “deterrence.”
The resurgence of German militarism is not accidental but the product of capitalism’s deep crisis. The ruling class is responding to growing great-power conflicts, extreme social inequality and working class resistance by turning to war abroad and repression at home. Driven by these objective forces, it can only move faster down this path.
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At a Defense Ministry conference on Tuesday, Pistorius announced plans to build new barracks “like on a production line” to accommodate the planned expansion of the army. “For the new military service alone, we will need around 40,000 additional beds for recruits and for soldiers in active units in the coming years,” he declared.
“According to current plans, that initially means around 270 new buildings—and not at some point, but by 2031, within the next five and a half years.”
The militarization extends beyond Earth into outer space. By 2030, the Defense Ministry intends to establish a €35 billion military space architecture—including satellites, radar systems, ground stations and even a spaceplane.
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Pistorius’s praise that “the next chapters of the Army will bear Freuding’s signature” amounts to an open declaration of war—not only on Russia but also on working people. The massive rearmament, the militarization of public life, the curtailment of democratic rights, and the preparation for domestic deployment of the Bundeswehr are inseparably linked.
The ruling class’s war offensive is already being met with growing resistance—strikes and mass protests against the genocide in Gaza, against militarization and war, and against the resulting assault on social and democratic rights spreading throughout Europe. What is required is an independent political orientation and perspective.
9. After the Los Angeles fires, the state finds a scapegoatThe strike by over 700 nurses at Henry Ford Genesys Hospital in Grand Blanc Township near Flint, Michigan, is entering its sixth week. Talks this week between the company and the Teamsters union reportedly produced no settlement on the key issue of safe nurse-to-patient staffing ratios.
Henry Ford Health acquired the operations of what was Grand Blanc Genesys Hospital through a joint venture with Ascension Michigan in 2024. Henry Ford Health is seeking to implement a single policy across all of its facilities, including drastically increasing existing staffing ratios at Genesys.
Management has stepped up its strikebreaking efforts in recent days, filing a court injunction to remove strikers’ tents, chairs, burn barrels and other gear from what it claims is company property along Holly and Baldwin roads. The Teamsters union bureaucracy readily agreed to these demands.
Nurses also report receiving notices from Henry Ford management offering them 5 percent raises if they cross picket lines and return to work on an individual basis. Meanwhile, strikebreakers are being paid $8,500 weekly plus stipends.
These provocative actions by management take place as 46,000 Kaiser Permanente nurses and other healthcare professionals across California, Oregon and Hawaii are set to strike October 14. Among their key issues are unsafe staffing levels and substandard pay.
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Colleen, a striking Genesys Health nurse, told reporters for the World Socialist Web Site, “I don’t think people realize how really bad healthcare is right now. It is not going to change until people stand up and say, ‘We pay a lot of money for our healthcare, we deserve the best care as a patient.’ We did not become nurses to give substandard care. That’s not why we are out here. It is heartbreaking.”
Nurses said that while the union had agreed to take down strikers’ tents on what Henry Ford claimed was its property, a homeowner along Holly Road near the hospital had agreed to let the strikers keep their tents. “A family member was a coal miner,” Colleen explained. “So they knew all about the strikes.”
Angela, another nurse, said, “The community has been very supportive, but there is a lack of knowledge. They know we are here, but they don’t really know the reasons why we are striking.
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Angela said she was glad to see the Kaiser Permanente nurses taking a stand. She said that this could strengthen the fight at Genesys and that management understood this. “They see Kaiser is going out. They are going to have a harder time getting scabs in there. So they are taking desperate measures against us now.
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The fact that the Teamster leadership supports Trump demonstrates that the union bureaucracy is not concerned with defending the interests of workers. Trump has slashed funding for healthcare and declared war on public health, appointing right-wing anti-vaccine quack Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has launched a frontal attack on the Constitution, attempting to set up a presidential dictatorship based on the police, military and fascist thugs.
The fight of Genesys nurses can only be successful to the extent that it is linked as part of the fight of all healthcare workers and the working class more broadly. The issues at Genesys are not local but national and international. Healthcare is being systematically dismantled to further enrich the billionaires and fund war.
To widen the fight, nurses must build a rank-and-file strike committee, democratically controlled by the nurses themselves and independent of the pro-corporate Teamsters officials.
Such a committee would formulate nurses’ non-negotiable demands, starting with mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios, and a fight to expand the strike by appealing to healthcare workers at other Henry Ford hospitals and Corewell across the area and nationally.
On October 8 federal prosecutors announced the arrest of 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht, charging him with igniting a small New Year’s Day blaze—the Lachman Fire—that investigators claim smoldered unseen in roots before reemerging days later as the catastrophic Palisades Fire, which killed a dozen people and destroyed thousands of homes.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California, led by Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, presented an affidavit as the case’s factual spine. Media outlets dutifully reproduced the story: an intentional ignition on January 1, apparent suppression, subterranean smoldering, and then a wind-driven resurging conflagration on January 7 that became the disaster everyone remembers.
At first glance the story has all the ingredients of a straightforward criminal case: a suspect allegedly at the scene, digital traces and surveillance tying him to the site, and forensic conclusions that link the later, larger fire to the earlier burn.
Investigators claim they located the Palisades origin at a burned root structure just outside the handline, a manually constructed firebreak cleared of vegetation to slow or stop a blaze, from the Lachman incident and that a “firebrand” smoldered in dense vegetation until winds turned it into open flame. They assert having ruled out other causes such as lightning, power-line failure, or a fresh ignition on January 7.
Yet the central forensic claim—that a holdover underground smolder persisted unseen for six days before resurfacing—is far from scientifically demonstrated. The complaint describes photos, site visits, and “investigative judgment,” but it offers no continuous thermal data proving combustion through the interval. No heat-signature time series, soil-temperature logs, or repeated infrared imagery have been released—only conclusions.
Smoldering in roots and duff is a real physical phenomenon. Fire scientists have long shown that organic matter can glow underground for days under the right conditions. The hypothesis is plausible, but plausibility is not proof. The prosecution’s case rests on a mosaic of inferences, scene patterns and exclusions, rather than a transparent sequence of public laboratory measurements. That distinction matters when one person is being blamed for a disaster with vast social and economic consequences.
The official narrative does more than point a finger at an alleged arsonist. It also implicitly blames the fire department for failing to detect or mop up smoldering hotspots. In statements released alongside the arrest, the Los Angeles Fire Department emphasized the traumatic toll of the blaze and released an after-action review of the initial response.
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The fixation on a lone culprit also serves to divert attention from political responsibility. Both major parties share it. For decades, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have gutted public prevention budgets while shielding private utilities and insurers.
In California, where Democrats dominate every lever of government, this responsibility is especially stark.
State leaders repeatedly blocked or diluted oversight of Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison, whose neglected equipment has caused repeated infernos. They allowed insurance giants like State Farm to profit from the crisis—charging higher premiums, denying claims, and then withdrawing coverage—while presenting these decisions as “market corrections.”
Private equity firms have been facilitated and allowed to monopolize the supply of fire trucks. The decay of the fire department, the neglect of grid infrastructure, and the absence of affordable insurance are all political outcomes, not natural accidents.
The “blame the arsonist” story criminalizes an individual while obscuring the bipartisan dismantling of public safety capacity. If the catastrophe can be reduced to the actions of one man, then litigation stays narrow and the structural causes—aging utilities, deregulated insurance, climate change, and state negligence—are removed from scrutiny.
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The economic angle is blunt and real. When a wildfire becomes framed as arson it gives insurers legal room to delay and contest claims. California’s insurance system has already been roiled by mass withdrawals from private insurers, a swollen FAIR Plan, and litigation over denials and restrictive interpretations for smoke and contamination claims.
Lawsuits filed against insurers and investigations by regulators show how the post-disaster legal architecture is fertile ground for denial, delay and reduced payouts, even as reconstruction contracts flow to contractors and developers who profit from the disaster economy. In that sense a scapegoat arson narrative protects corporate balance sheets and preserves the social conditions under which private profit from catastrophe continues apace.
There is a political face to this operation too. The federal arrest was announced by Trump loyalist Bill Essayli, the acting U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, installed by Attorney General Pam Bondi and kept in power by Trump through a maneuver that circumvented Senate confirmation.
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Even if Rinderknecht were found guilty, it would change nothing about the state’s scapegoating operation or the political function it serves: diverting attention from systemic responsibility.
More broadly, disasters are never the work of one individual. They are produced by social relations and political priorities. Wildfires in California expose class inequality: who can afford insurance, who can evacuate, who profits afterward. In West Altadena, those who died lived in neighborhoods long deprived of emergency resources. The Democrats who govern California are primarily responsible for that reality through deregulation and their alliance with corporate energy and finance.
To focus public anger on one supposed arsonist is to perform the oldest function of capitalist politics: scapegoating to conceal social crime. It protects the ruling class, diverts rage from the corporations and bureaucracies that profit from catastrophe, and legitimizes further repression.
The only genuine safeguard against such tragedies is not sensational prosecution but massive public investment and democratic control: publicly owned, modernized utilities; a universal, non-profit insurance system; fully staffed fire departments; and internationally coordinated planning for a warming climate. In a word, socialist measures, grounded in human need, not private accumulation.
10. Trump DOJ expands political vendetta with indictment of New York AG Letitia James
The indictment of New York Attorney General Letitia James by the US Justice Department represents an escalation of President Donald Trump’s ongoing campaign to subvert the rule of law for the purposes of personal and political vendetta against his enemies.
Announced with fanfare by Trump’s handpicked prosecutor, the charges against James are part of the broader assault on democratic government in the US. A critical component of this assault is the implementation of the Führer principle in the White House, where everything and everyone is subordinated to the wishes of Trump.
On Thursday, a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, handed down indictments against James, charging her with one count of bank fraud and one count of making false statements to a financial institution.
According to the indictment, James is accused of misrepresenting her second residence on mortgage documents for a property purchased in Norfolk, Virginia, in 2020 and allegedly securing preferential loan terms by stating she would personally use the home, when it was instead rented to another family. The maximum penalties in this case are severe, carrying up to 30 years in prison and $1 million in fines per count.
Lindsey Halligan, the acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and a personal legal protégé of the president, presided over the announcement with a level of hypocrisy that is a hallmark of Trump’s rule. “No one is above the law. The charges as alleged in this case represent intentional, criminal acts and tremendous breaches of the public’s trust,” Halligan proclaimed in the Department of Justice press release.
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James swiftly rejected these claims, calling the charges “unfounded, and the president’s own public remarks clearly indicate that his sole intention is political vengeance at any cost. This president’s behavior constitutes a serious breach of our Constitutional framework and has attracted significant criticism from both sides of the aisle.”
James added in her video statement, “This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system. He is forcing federal law enforcement agencies to do his bidding, all because I did my job as the New York State Attorney General.”
This indictment cannot be understood apart from the context of Trump’s direct and public threat to prosecute James. Trump has repeatedly urged criminal action against her in posts on X (formerly Twitter). His social media messages show that the case against James is the product of Trump’s “revenge” and political retribution rather than a prosecutorial matter.
On September 20, 2025, Trump intended to privately message Attorney General Pam Bondi but mistakenly posted it publicly, urging her to take legal action against James and others. The message addressed Bondi by name (“Pam”) and expressed frustration that “nothing is being done” to prosecute his opponents, stating: “They all guilty hell, nothing is to be done… We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility… JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
This post is direct evidence of Trump’s illegal intervention to pressure the Justice Department to target political adversaries, an unprecedented act by a sitting president.
Leticia James has been targeted for her successful summary judgment against Trump and his business associates on charges of large-scale financial fraud in 2024. The original civil fraud case found Trump and his business partners guilty of artificially inflating the value of their holdings to secure loans and evade taxes. Although the penalty for “ill-gotten gains” was overturned on appeal, the criminal judgment itself stands, and the facts of rampant corruption within the Trump business empire are a matter of court record.
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Legal experts have denounced the merits of Halligan’s charges against James. Former US Attorney Erik Siebert, who previously refused to bring charges against James, has said repeatedly that the evidence was “pathetically weak,” a sentiment shared by career prosecutors who found no basis for federal fraud.
The response of the Democratic Party to Trump’s dictatorial intervention in the operations of the DOJ has been entirely predictable. California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who was appointed in 2021 by Democratic Party Governor Gavin Newsom, called on the DOJ leadership to “reassert the long-standing independence of the US Department of Justice and immediately end all politically-motivated criminal prosecutions,” and demanding impartiality and adherence to constitutional norms.
This plea to the fascists now in charge of the DOJ received the following response from spokesperson Chad Gilmartin, “As a matter of law, we will not comment on any grand jury proceedings … but this Justice Department stands united as one team in our mission to enhance safety in America. The attorney general, deputy attorney general, and the entire team at Main Justice remain committed to empowering our US attorneys to pursue justice in every case.”
Exposing the atmosphere of panic operating within the Trump administration, however, were the reports that Justice Department officials, including AG Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche, were blindsided by Halligan’s presentation to the grand jury. This lack of coordination, which is also historically unprecedented, exposes both the lawlessness of Donald Trump and the chaos that prevails within the administration.
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The plan by the White House for a unitary executive—unchecked presidential power—is well documented. In an interview with CNN on Monday, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller claimed that Trump has “plenary authority”—a term meaning complete or absolute power—over decisions to deploy the National Guard in US cities.
Miller paused abruptly after making this statement, which raised speculation about the implications of his blatantly stating the scope of presidential power that contradicts the US separation of powers principle.
The indictment of the New York Attorney General is part of the larger, systematic attack on both political opponents and constitutional government. The transparently political charges against James are being used as an instrument of Trump’s personal revenge and a further escalation of dictatorial rule in the US.
11. New Australian Federal Police units to enforce “social cohesion”
Backed by the Albanese Labor government, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has set up unprecedented National Security Investigations (NSI) teams to target groups and individuals allegedly causing harm to Australia’s “social cohesion.”
According to the official media statement: “The NSI teams began operations in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra in September as part of the AFP’s well-established Counter Terrorism and Special Investigations Command.”
This marks a drive to use the 8,000-strong AFP as a force to spy on, disrupt, threaten and prosecute any political activity regarded as a danger to what the government’s recently appointed AFP chief Krissy Barrett has called the country’s “social fabric”—essentially the existing capitalist order.
Officially, the “NSI teams” will work closely with the domestic political surveillance agency, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), and the state and territory police forces “to provide a nationally coordinated, consistent and intelligence-led response” to “security threats” to “deliver the most effective and disruptive policing response.”
Terms such as “social cohesion” and “security threats” are deliberately vague. They go far beyond the already vast scope of what is legally classified as “terrorism,” “politically-motivated violence” or “hate speech.”
There is a definite echo of the Trump administration’s use of the amorphous label “antifa” to target all, especially left-wing, opposition to its fascistic program and support for the genocide in Gaza.
Significantly, the AFP statement emphasized the wide scope of the NSI operations and their collaboration with the “Five Eyes” surveillance and policing network. This global network, now led by the Trump White House and its FBI and CIA commanders, also includes the UK, Canada and New Zealand.
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Technically, the AFP is responsible for federal law enforcement, while the state and territory police forces deal with most criminal cases. Increasingly, however the AFP has become the central political policing instrument. At a Senate estimates hearing this week, Barrett defined the AFP as a “national security agency.”
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In a round of media interviews this week to mark the start of her term of office, Barrett went further, saying the AFP would be “laser focused on protecting our sovereignty, our democracy, our social cohesion, our financial sector and our future prosperity.” That specifically covers any opposition to the corporate elite, as well as its parliamentary servants.
Barrett also linked the AFP’s NSI focus to the mass opposition to the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and the Albanese government’s active complicity in this historic crime. “In the past two years, particularly post-October 7, 2023, we have seen a changing operating environment for law enforcement in Australia,” she told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Barrett insisted that “hate crime” laws rushed through parliaments earlier this year, spearheaded by the federal and state Labor governments, may need to be made even more far-reaching.
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Over the past two decades, the AFP, ASIO and other parts of an expanding police and intelligence network have been handed extensive powers of surveillance, detention and interrogation, without trial or conviction, mostly under the banner of the post-2001 “war on terrorism” proclaimed by governments internationally.
As the World Socialist Web Site warned from the outset, this created the scaffolding for police-state measures that went beyond “terrorism” to rising social and political unrest under conditions of ever-greater economic inequality, deteriorating social conditions and mounting war dangers.
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The threat to free speech and basic democratic rights was underscored this week when the NSW Court of Appeal, in a judgment hailed by the state Labor government, declared that unprecedented “contempt of court” charges—potentially carrying indefinite terms of imprisonment—could be laid against anyone defying the court’s prohibition of an anti-genocide march to the Sydney Opera House tomorrow.
12. Texas death row inmate Rob Roberson granted a stay of execution
The machinery of the Texas state killing apparatus, overseen by Republican Governor Greg Abbott and his attorney general, Ken Paxton, has suffered a setback in its campaign to execute Robert Roberson, an innocent and disabled man. Just days before his scheduled execution on October 16, 2025, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) granted Roberson a stay, sending his case back to the district court for further review.
Robert Roberson was convicted and sentenced to death in the 2002 death of his two-year-old daughter Nikki, based on medical testimony diagnosing Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS). The CCA granted Roberson a stay of execution and remanded his case to the trial court to consider his request for relief based on the precedent set in Ex parte Roark. Roberson must try to demonstrate that the new scientific evidence warrants relief, which could ultimately lead to a new trial and possible exoneration.
Roberson is seeking relief under Texas’ “junk science statute,” Article 11.073, which allows prisoners to challenge convictions based on scientific evidence that is now outdated, debunked or has evolved. The evidence in question leading to Roberson’s conviction involved charges by prosecutors that Nikki died of SBS.
Texas death row inmate Andrew Roark was convicted in 2000 of child injury based on an SBS diagnosis. In 2024, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) overturned his conviction under Article 11.073, concluding that new scientific evidence had discredited the shaken baby syndrome theory used at his original trial.
Andrew Roark was granted a new trial and subsequently exonerated, creating a significant legal precedent that now influences ongoing reconsideration of similar convictions, including Robert Roberson’s.
The CCA’s reasoning for halting Roberson’s execution centered on the fact that the government’s original case was “inseparably intertwined with Shaken Baby Syndrome as it was medically understood more than 20 years ago.” Given the “deeper understanding” of this “junk science,” the court acknowledged that previous assumptions might no longer be true. Stating that “A death sentence is clearly final” and requires the “highest standards of accuracy,” the court found Roberson deserves a new hearing to present evidence regarding the discredited SBS diagnosis.
There is a clear parallel between the Roberson and Roark cases. Both involved convictions based on the now-discredited SBS hypothesis. Roberson’s attorney, Gretchen Sween, is confident that an objective review of the medical evidence in his case will show “there was no crime.”
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At least 41 people have been exonerated in the US after being wrongfully convicted based on the SBS hypothesis, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. If Texas succeeds in executing Roberson, he would be the first person in the US executed for a conviction based on SBS.
Further mitigating factors underscore Roberson’s innocence. Roberson suffers from autism spectrum disorder. His observed lack of emotional reaction and “flat affect” at the hospital, which was used by prosecutors to paint him as a “callous liar,” is now understood by experts and advocates as behavior symptomatic of his condition. Even Brian Wharton, the former lead detective who initially investigated the case, now believes Roberson is innocent, admitting, “We got it wrong” due to misinterpreting Roberson’s behavior and being fed “incomplete and bad information.”
Additionally, Roberson’s trial was corrupted by judicial misconduct that only recently came to light in the NBC News podcast “The Last Appeal,” released in October 2025. Judge Bascom Bentley, who presided over Roberson’s 2003 capital murder trial, had previously authorized Nikki’s maternal grandparents to remove her from life support. Under Texas law, Roberson, as Nikki’s sole managing conservator, was the only one with the legal authority to make that decision. Roberson’s attorneys argue that Judge Bentley’s failure to disclose this conflict of interest and recuse himself constitutes “structural error” requiring a new trial. As his lawyer noted, this is “glaring, undisclosed evidence of bias” discovered only days before his scheduled execution.
Adding to the travesty at trial, psychologist Thomas Allen testified that Roberson was a “psychopath,” listing Adolf Hitler and serial killer Ted Bundy as examples with the same condition. This label relied on a controversial checklist and unsubstantiated sexual assault accusations, creating an impossible-to-remove prejudice against him in the eyes of the jury.
The World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly denounced the death penalty as a barbaric institution used to shore up ruling class power under conditions of burgeoning social inequality and the drive to dictatorship.
The system’s callous indifference to Roberson’s innocence—and its relentless pursuit of his death—is the domestic expression of the same ruling class that oversees imperialist wars and genocidal violence abroad, including the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza. The drive to execute Roberson further demonstrates Texas authorities’ disdain for due process and use of capital punishment as a terrorizing bludgeon against the population based on retribution and revenge.
The delayed execution of Roberson comes amid a boom in state-sponsored killings. So far in 2025, the US has carried out 35 executions across 10 states, with 11 more scheduled for the remainder of the year, marking the highest number in more than a decade.
States carrying out executions so far in 2025 include:
- Florida (13, lethal injection)
- Texas (5, lethal injection)
- Alabama (3, nitrogen gas hypoxia; 1, lethal injection)
- Indiana (2 by lethal injection)
- Tennessee (2, lethal injection)
- South Carolina (2, lethal injection; 2 firing squad)
- Oklahoma (2, lethal injection)
- Arizona (1, lethal injection)
- Louisiana (1, nitrogen gas hypoxia)
- Mississippi (1, lethal injection)
Governor Abbott has personally overseen 77 executions. Since the US Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976 the US has sent 1,642 people to their deaths, with Texas accounting for a staggering 596 of these.
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Neither of the two major big business parties opposes this assembly line of state killings. Notably, the Democratic Party removed its previous reference to opposition to the death penalty from its 2024 election platform, lending tacit support to this barbaric practice.
Donald Trump presided over the executions of an unprecedented 13 federal death row inmates during his first administration, including three executions carried out between his January 6, 2021, coup attempt and his departure from office. On Inauguration Day of his second term Trump signed a sweeping executive order on executions aimed at restoring and expanding the federal death penalty.
As the US wrote on October 17, 2024, after Roberson received his second eleventh-hour reprieve:
The World Socialist Web Site has a long record of covering and opposing the more than 1,600 executions which have taken place since the death penalty was reinstated by the US Supreme Court in 1976. We have published more than 300 articles opposing and exposing the plight of those who have paid the ultimate price at the hands of this oppressive system of class rule.
The continued existence of the death penalty in the United States exposes the criminality and violence of the entire capitalist political and economic system. Robert Roberson must be set free and this long-outmoded punishment, meted out overwhelming against the working class and the poor, must be abolished.
13. New Zealand government smears “far left” and anti-genocide protests as “violent”
New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters has seized on recent incidents, including the breaking of a window at his house, to ramp up his campaign to delegitimize protests against the Gaza genocide and to smear all left-wing political opposition.
On October 6, a window was smashed at Peters’ house in Auckland and shortly afterwards a 29-year-old man was arrested and charged with burglary. The man, who has been given name suppression by the court, has pleaded not guilty. Within hours of the incident, before anything had been made public about the alleged perpetrator, Peters posted on X: “This is the type of violent hate-filled behavior we warned about in the past few days about the radical left.”
Without providing any evidence, he blamed the act of vandalism on “protesters, political bloggers, and MPs alike encouraging this behavior, posting politician’s [sic] home addresses online, and acting with pure ignorance and extremism.”
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Peters has been denounced at rallies attended by thousands up and down the country since his speech at the UN whitewashing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. He has since hailed US president Donald Trump’s so-called “peace plan,” a blueprint for the colonial takeover of the Gaza Strip and the continued oppression of the Palestinian people.
Peters’ right-wing nationalist New Zealand First Party and the far-right ACT Party—which both play a major role in the National Party-led coalition government—have repeatedly made hysterical and unsubstantiated accusations that anti-genocide protesters are promoting “violence” and “anti-semitism.”
The government is taking its cue from the US Trump administration, which has exploited the assassination of the fascist agitator Charlie Kirk to label all anti-fascist opposition as “violent extremism” and “terrorism.” In response to mass opposition to war, genocide and social inequality, Trump is deploying the military into American cities in what is an unfolding coup aimed at establishing a dictatorship.
While New Zealand’s ruling class has not yet gone this far, the same political dynamic is at work. The government is responding to the profound economic crisis by implementing brutal austerity measures that are driving thousands into poverty, while boosting funding for the military in preparation to join US-led imperialist wars. This agenda cannot be imposed democratically; pretexts must therefore be found, or concocted, to justify the suppression of opposition.
One such pretext was supplied by the Daily Blog, a nationalist publication which supports the Greens and the Labour Party.
On October 5, the day before Peters’ window was broken, the blog’s editor Martyn Bradbury published an article encouraging people to shout “Zionist coward” and “war criminal” if they saw members of the government in the street. He added: “if you are serving a National, ACT and NZF MP food, make sure you spit in that food.”
This provocative statement was a gift to the right-wing government. It was immediately exploited by Peters to accuse “the far left” of being “violent and divisive.”
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With the support of the opposition Labour Party, the government is seeking to pass laws against “foreign interference,” which could also be used to criminalise protests if they are deemed to be “on behalf of a foreign power” and harmful to New Zealand’s “protected interests.”
Consultation is underway on potential changes to the Terrorism Suppression Act, which could lead to people being charged with a criminal offense if they express any support for designated “terrorist” organizations. Britain’s Labour government has used similar laws to arrest hundreds of peaceful anti-genocide protesters.
The ruling elite’s support for genocide and imperialist wars, and its attacks on living standards and democratic rights at home, must be opposed. But this cannot be done through individualistic actions such as breaking windows or spitting in politicians’ food—impotent and stupid outbursts which only play into the hands of the state and provide a pretext for repression.
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 are the latest published sections of a total of 33:
26. Globalization and the Perspective of Socialism
27. The Dissolution of the Soviet Union
15. The Wohlforth-Fields violation of party security and the response of the International Committee
This lecture, part of the Socialist Equality Party Summer School series, reviews the Wohlforth–Fields breach of party security in the Workers League in 1974 and the event’s significance in the origins of the Security and the Fourth International investigation.16. How the GPU Murdered Trotsky
Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the October 1917 Revolution, was assassinated in Mexico on August 20, 1940. Security and the Fourth International, launched by the International Committee of the Fourth International launched in May 1975, was the first major investigation into the circumstances of his murder.
The World Socialist Web Site will be publishing sections from the book How the GPU Murdered Trotsky over the coming weeks, to accompany Lectures 5-7 of the Socialist Equality Party (US) 2025 Summer School, held between August 2-9, 2025.
17. Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia
Bangladesh:
Islami Bank employees oppose terminations
India:
Tamil Nadu sanitation workers in Madurai plan indefinite strike
Andhra Pradesh construction workers strike for overdue wages
Punjab Anganwadi employees protest non-payment of honorarium
Himachal Pradesh emergency ambulance workers walk out
Pakistan:
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa college academics protest outsourcing
Sri Lanka:
Public sector health workers strike over management intimidation
Australia:
Industrial action continues at Woodside oil and gas production in Western Australia
CBH Kwinana grain terminal workers locked out again during pay dispute
Tasmanian public health and community services workers reject low pay offer
Hydro Tasmania specialised workers strike for pay rise
Western Australian firefighters rally for better pay and conditions
Rix’s Creek miners walk out in New South Wales
Victorian nurses’ union prepares for industrial action at Healthscope
18. 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.
