Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: October 20-26
- 25 years ago:
General Robert Guei removed from power in Ivory Coast
50 years ago:
Soviet Venera space probes send first images from another planet
75 years ago:
Communist Party Dissolution Act signed into law in Australia
100 years ago:
Italian imperialism pushes into Somaliland
The more than 2,700 separate demonstrations in cities and towns throughout the United States were, collectively, one of the largest political demonstrations in the history of the country. Organizers estimated seven million people participated, two million more than they said took part in the first round of “No Kings” rallies in June.
Mass marches of hundreds of thousands were held in major cities, including New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington D.C., while hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands more rallied in smaller cities and towns across the country. In Europe, thousands joined parallel demonstrations in London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Stockholm and Rome, as well as in dozens of smaller cities.
The scale and breadth of participation explodes the official narrative, promoted by the corporate media and the Democratic Party, that Trump is an unchallengeable political colossus. The reality, revealed in the streets on October 18, is that Trump and his coterie of fascist cabinet figures face enormous and growing opposition.
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Trump gave his answer to the protests on Sunday, declaring in a pre-recorded discussion with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo, “Don’t forget: I can use the Insurrection Act.” The invocation of the act, which top administration officials have indicated is imminent, would sanction the deployment of active-duty military forces under the direction of the president. Trump directly threatened Democratic Party-controlled states and indicated that he was planning to send the National Guard into San Francisco.
The day of the protest, Trump, true to his Nazi upbringing and intellectual debasement, responded with filth—literally. He shared on his social media account a video showing the aspiring Führer wearing a crown and piloting a plane, emblazoned with the words “King Trump,” dumping feces over protesters in Times Square. Another AI video, posted by Vance, depicted Trump being crowned and unsheathing a sword, as Democratic Party politicians bowed before him.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson gave voice to the deepest fears of the American ruling class, telling ABC News’ “This Week” interview program that he would “talk with you about the dangers of Marxism and socialism” every week. He added, “It is a dangerous ideology, and it is anti-American. It goes against everything that we stand for.” Referring to the likely election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York, on a program of limited reforms that he is rapidly repudiating, Johnson warned of the “rise of Marxism in the Democratic Party.”
The violent denunciations of the October 18 demonstrations by Trump and the Republican fascists, accompanied by threats of violence, express the terror of the capitalist oligarchs over the growing opposition and political radicalization of the population. They see in every manifestation of protest the specter of a socialist revolution. In their fascistic world view, even the toothless reformist appeals of the Democratic Party, the oldest capitalist party of the American ruling class, is viewed as inciting rebellion and legitimizing socialism.
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In the lead-up to the October 18 protests, top Democrats ignored that they were even happening. Only on the eve of the demonstrations, when it became clear how large they would be, did party leaders issue tepid statements of support. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer posted photos of himself marching alongside union officials in New York City, declaring blandly, “We have no dictators in America”—a statement contradicted by the fact that Trump is, with Democratic Party complicity, acting as a dictator.
The intervention of the Democrats is aimed entirely at defusing opposition and channeling the immense anger of millions back behind the party’s own reactionary, pro-war and pro-capitalist agenda. This became even clearer the following day, when leading Democrats acted as if the largest protest movement in US history had never occurred.
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Those who posture as the “left” within the Democratic Party—above all, Senator Bernie Sanders—play a particularly foul role. Sanders’ last-minute decision to parachute into the main rally in Washington D.C., after previously planning to address a small event in Vermont, was a calculated intervention aimed at channeling the growing radicalization of millions back into the safe confines of the Democratic Party.
Sanders’ speech was demagogy in its purest form—a compendium of moral appeals and denunciations of billionaires devoid of any political content. While invoking “freedom,” “democracy,” and the danger of authoritarianism, he never once mentioned capitalism or socialism. Sanders spoke of “fighting for working families,” but he offered no explanation of what type of struggle he proposed, because he does not propose one.
The most significant statement Sanders made was his declaration: “I say to my Republican colleagues, come back from your month-long vacation, start negotiating, and do not allow the American healthcare system to be destroyed. End this shutdown.” These “colleagues” are Trump’s fascist co-conspirators. To address them as partners in “negotiation” under conditions where the government is preparing to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy the military against the population is not simply naive. It is an act of political complicity.
Then there is the trade union apparatus, which made no effort to mobilize its members for the demonstrations, even among those unions that formally endorsed them, though many workers attended on their own.
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The “No Kings” demonstrations represent a significant political turning point. Since the last demonstrations in June, Trump’s conspiracy to erect a dictatorship has accelerated, generating enormous opposition throughout the country. Hostility to Trump is rapidly extending to his collaborators in the Democratic Party, as NBC noted in a report from the Washington demonstration, quoting a construction worker as saying, “I don’t have a lot of faith in the Democratic Party right now.” Another worker commented, “By and large, the Democratic Party is also bought by corporate interests, and they fail to stand up for the average working people.”
It is quite unusual for the corporate media to report on such sentiments. Even more extraordinary was the report in the US edition of the British newspaper The Guardian, which noted: “Leftist groups have called for the enunciation of a clear political program and concrete demands. In an 15 October statement, No Kings, No Nazi Führers! Mobilize the Working Class Against Trump’s Dictatorship!, the Socialist Equality Party said the central slogan, ‘No Kings,’ articulates vast popular hostility to autocracy but warned that ‘anger and outrage are not enough to stop dictatorship.’”
It is an objective fact that the Socialist Equality Party was the only organization to place “a clear political program and concrete demands” before this mass audience. SEP members and supporters, as well as members of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, distributed tens of thousands of leaflets at dozens of locations across the United States.
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In the fight against Trump and fascism, any subordination to the Democratic Party is absolutely fatal. As the SEP statement distributed en masse at the rally explains, Trump’s regime is not an aberration, but the product of a diseased social order. It is a government of, by and for the oligarchy. Trump, we wrote, “has been chosen to deal with an escalating series of economic, social and geopolitical crises for which no conventional, legal, Constitutional and non-violent solutions are at hand.”
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The outcome of the present crisis depends on whether the working class, the only truly revolutionary social force, enters the political situation independently, consciously, and with its own program. Millions took to the streets, and many workers participated, but the working class has not yet intervened independently through the methods of class struggle.
The Socialist Equality Party fights for the formation of rank-and-file committees in every workplace, school, and neighborhood. These committees must take up the defense not only of workers’ economic and social interests, but also of their most basic democratic rights, against the police state measures being implemented by the Trump government. They must coordinate nationally and internationally through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) to unite the struggles of workers across all industries and borders.
The entry of the working class into political struggle on its own independent basis will transform the entire situation. It will provide a revolutionary pole of attraction for the millions who are opposed to dictatorship and war but lack a clear political alternative.
The Socialist Equality Party is fighting to arm the growing movement of workers and youth with a clear understanding of the historical, political and class forces at work. The fight against dictatorship in the United States is inseparable from the fight of workers all over the world against imperialist war, social inequality and capitalist exploitation. The path forward lies in uniting the international working class in a common struggle for socialism.
3. Israel massacres 45 Palestinians in a single day, exposing fraud of “peace” deal
Since the announcement of the “ceasefire” agreement, 97 Palestinians have been killed in 80 separate violations of the terms of the agreement by Israeli forces. In addition, 230 people have been injured in these attacks.
The ongoing Israeli massacres and deliberate restriction of food make it clear that the “peace” agreement was nothing but a cover for the ongoing genocide. Governments in the Middle East and in Europe and all major media publications hailed the agreement as a breakthrough and a major step toward peace. It is no such thing. It merely cements and makes permanent the Israeli occupation of Gaza and gives diplomatic cover for daily massacres and deliberate mass starvation by Israel.
3. 2025 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded for the discovery of Peripheral Immune Tolerance
While traditional immunology long emphasized central tolerance, the process by which self-reactive T cells are eliminated in the thymus, the laureates’ discoveries revealed a crucial additional layer: peripheral tolerance. This system operates throughout the body to control any self-reactive T cells that escape deletion in the thymus, preventing them from triggering autoimmune disease.
T cells are continuously generated in the bone marrow and mature in the thymus, a process that begins before birth and continues, though at a declining rate, throughout life. There they undergo rigorous “training” to distinguish self from non-self. Once they exit the thymus, peripheral tolerance mechanisms take over, acting as a secondary safeguard. These mechanisms either silence or suppress potentially self-reactive T cells through the action of regulatory T cells (Tregs).
Most Tregs originate in the thymus (thymic Tregs), but others can arise later in the body’s peripheral tissues and lymph nodes, where certain environmental and inflammatory cues induce ordinary T cells to acquire regulatory functions (peripherally induced Tregs). Together, these systems maintain the body’s internal harmony and allow the immune system to remain vigilant without turning its weapons on itself.
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The discoveries surrounding Tregs and FOXP3 have profoundly advanced our understanding of how autoimmune diseases develop and opened a dynamic field of research centered on harnessing immune regulation for therapeutic benefit. Tregs are now recognized as pivotal targets in three major areas of human health: autoimmune disease (including type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis), organ transplantation, and cancer.
The translational impact of this research is already evident. Clinical trials are exploring Treg-based cell therapies designed to restore immune balance, either by expanding functional Tregs to treat autoimmune disorders and promote transplant tolerance, or by blocking or depleting Tregs to prevent them from suppressing anti-tumor immune responses in cancer therapy. These dual strategies exemplify the immune system’s remarkable balance between protection and restraint, and how understanding that balance can be translated into life-saving interventions. Ironically, the same suppressive mechanisms that protect us from autoimmunity must be dismantled to fight cancer.
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Although the mechanisms of central tolerance—the elimination of self-reactive, immature T cells in the thymus—were well understood, the persistence of debilitating autoimmune diseases revealed that this system alone could not fully explain how the body maintains immune tolerance.
The discovery recognized by the 2025 Nobel Prize resolved this mystery by defining peripheral immune tolerance, a complementary layer of active immune control that operates outside the central lymphoid organs. After decades of controversy surrounding the idea of “suppressor T cells,” [Shimon] Sakaguchi provided the first definitive cellular evidence in 1995, demonstrating that a distinct population of Tregs actively suppresses inflammation and prevents autoimmunity. Only a few years later, in 2001, [Mary E.] Brunkow and [Fred] Ramsdell identified the genetic basis of this regulation in the FOXP3 gene, which governs the development and function of Tregs. Together, these discoveries established the dual architecture of immune tolerance—central and peripheral—that preserves the body’s integrity against both external and internal threats.
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As our capacity to decode the immune system expands, so too does the moral question of who will benefit from that knowledge. Systems immunology offers a dynamic window into the body’s cellular microcosm. By collecting and integrating molecular data directly from human patients during key clinical events like after a vaccination, infection, or during disease progression, it promises to accelerate discovery and bridge the gap between fundamental knowledge and precise, personalized immunotherapy for the future.
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The immune system lies at the very center of human health, intricately intertwined with nearly every physiological process. Far from being an isolated organ, it communicates continuously with the nervous, endocrine, and metabolic systems, coordinating the body’s defense not only against external pathogens but also against internal dysregulation.
This fundamental importance underscores the 2025 Nobel Prize, awarded to Brunkow, Ramsdell, and Sakaguchi for defining the Treg lineage and the FOXP3 gene that governs it. The scientific merit of their discovery is indisputable, extending the Nobel tradition of honoring breakthroughs that advance knowledge for the “benefit of humankind.”
Yet the economic reality surrounding how such discoveries are translated into practice exposes a deep tension between human need and commercial imperatives. The medical revolution sparked by the discovery of Tregs is now deeply entwined with costly, biotechnology-driven medicine. For instance, Dr. Ramsdell’s leadership at Sonoma Biotherapeutics, which is advancing Treg cell therapies into clinical trials for conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and autoimmune liver disease, represents the direct transformation of Nobel-winning insight into commercial enterprise.
Furthermore, the latest advances in personalized immunotherapies, such as mRNA-based cancer vaccines, come with formidable financial costs, often exceeding $100,000 per patient. While these treatments hold transformative promise for aggressive diseases like melanoma and pancreatic cancer, their high cost and the technical complexity of manufacturing patient-specific T-cell products through adoptive cell transfer (ACT) mean that access to the true benefit of these discoveries remains sharply constrained. Scalability, patent exclusivity, and profit-driven pricing frequently determine who can receive these therapies, rather than the scope of their medical potential.
The modern frontier of medicine is therefore dual in nature. On one side, scientists continue to unravel intricate biological puzzles, as exemplified by the 2025 Nobel recognition of peripheral immune tolerance. On the other, the realization of these discoveries depends on overcoming the economic, manufacturing, and policy obstacles that govern access to innovation. Whether these therapies become universally accessible instruments of health or remain prohibitively expensive commodities benefiting a privileged few (both medically and financially) will depend not only on scientific ingenuity, but on the struggle to overturn a profit-driven medical order and establish a public health system based on providing access to therapies to all who need them, regardless of wealth and income.
4. US State Department revokes visas of 6 people for denouncing Charlie Kirk’s politics
In a major attack on free speech rights, the Trump administration revoked the visas of six people for their social media posts criticizing the fascist politics of Charlie Kirk after his death.
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The furious public response to the administration’s actions was expressed in a viral post by immigration attorney Eric Lee, who announced that the newly formed Consular Accountability Project would offer pro bono legal representation to any visa holders whose status was revoked for expressing opinions related to the assassination of fascist operative Charlie Kirk. “If your visa was denied or revoked due to Charlie Kirk–related speech, the Consular Accountability Project (@ConsularActProj) is interested in representing you pro bono,” Lee wrote.
His tweet, posted shortly after the State Department declared that the United States “has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans,” has been viewed 3.4 million times, liked over 62,000 times and retweeted more than 11,000 times. The scale of the response reflects the mass opposition to Trump’s assault on free speech and the growing determination to challenge the regime’s criminalization of political expression and thought.
5. Victims of Bangladesh garment factory fire included teenage workers from nearby slum
Nearly a week after the October 14 fire that killed at least 16 workers at the Anwar Fashion garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, desperate families are still searching for as many as 11 missing workers. Many of the victims were teenage workers 14 years old, if not younger.
Most lived in a nearby slum, packed between chemical warehouses, garment factories and other industrial death traps in the Mirpur neighborhood of the Bangladeshi capital.
The tragedy began when a fire erupted at a chemical warehouse adjacent to Anwar Fashion. Because the garment factory’s door to the roof was padlocked with two locks, the New Age wrote on October 19, the victims could not escape.
“Most died not from burns,” the New Age reported, “but from inhaling the thick, toxic fumes released when chemicals like hydrogen peroxide and bleaching powder exploded, filling the air with poisonous smoke.”
Desperately poor workers are paid a monthly wage of 7,000-7,500 taka (US$57.00-$61.50). Underscoring slave labor conditions at the factory, the sister of one of the victims, a 14-year-old, told The Star: “Just the day before, she said, ‘I’ll leave this factory. There’s never a day off here’.”
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Facing popular anger over yet another industrial disaster, the Labour and Employment Ministry announced the formation of a seven-member committee to investigate the incident. The ministry said 200,000 taka ($US1,641) in compensation would be paid to each deceased worker’s family and 50,000 taka (US$410.55) for medical treatment for each injured worker.
According to a New Age editorial on October 18, the Anwar Fashion factory had no fire exits, alarms or safety systems and was not registered with any trade or government bodies.
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The Fire Prevention and Control Act of 2003, the Environment Conservation Rules of 1997 and other regulations, which ostensibly prohibit employers from locating chemical and other hazardous industries in residential areas are looked at as dead letters. Authorities simply turn a blind eye on the operation of such industries, which openly flout basic safety procedures.
This makes clear the dead and injured workers were not the victim of an “accident” but of social murder and the deliberate sacrifice of workers’ lives for corporate profit.
Just two days after the Mirpur incident, another massive fire engulfed a seven-story towel factory in the Chattogram (Chittagong) Export Processing Zone (EPZ), 293 km (182 miles) to the west of Dhaka. At least 20-25 workers were rescued from the Adams Caps & Textiles Ltd factory, and the blaze took 17 hours to control, the Daily Star reported October 18.
Two days later, “A massive fire tore through the cargo complex of Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka,” the Star reported, “burning goods stored at the facility, disrupting flights, and causing long delays and diversions.”
Between 2019 and 2023, Bangladesh recorded over 100,000 fires nationwide, many involving chemical substances. In 2022 alone, 24,102 fires caused 85 deaths and injured nearly 400 people. The Centre for Policy Dialogue found that at least 856 factories remain outside the purview of any authority.
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The ongoing industrial slaughter has not changed the policies of the Bangladeshi capitalist class and foreign investors who reap massive profits from the super-exploitation of the working class.
The response is the same: A disaster occurs; government ministers visit, expressing sorrow for the victims’ families and promising meager compensation; and an investigation committee is appointed. In the end, however, those responsible are never held to account, the media sweeps the story under the rug, Bangladesh continues to sell itself to international investors as a cheap labor haven, and the victimized families bear the losses forever.
6. Stalinist leader hails Raila Odinga’s role in “Kenya’s bourgeois democratic struggle”
On October 15, Booker Omole, the general secretary of the Communist Party Marxist–Kenya (CPM-K), published a brief but revealing statement on Twitter following the death of veteran bourgeois opposition leader and former prime minister, Raila Odinga:
“Raila Odinga is dead. We honour his courage against dictatorship and his role in Kenya’s bourgeois democratic struggle. Yet his politics never broke with imperialism. His end reminds us: reforms die, revolutions live.”
In the weeks since Odinga’s death, his passing has dominated headlines across Kenya, the region, and the world. Virtually every major international outlet has published at least one tribute. The entire political and media establishment, from President William Ruto and the official opposition to former US President Barack Obama and the New York Times, has hailed Odinga as a “champion of democracy.” Kenya’s leading news organizations, including the Standard, Daily Nation, Citizen TV, and the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, have devoted continuous coverage to every facet of his life and career.
Amid this chorus of praise, the Kenyan Stalinists have remained almost entirely silent, only broken by Omole’s brief tweet. The tweet stands out for what it reveals about the CPMK and the wider decay of Stalinist politics in Africa. A political current that still claims to represent socialism has proven incapable of even writing an article or statement offering an analysis of a man who shaped Kenya’s bourgeois order for four decades. Instead, it has issued a carefully worded tweet that simultaneously distances itself from and pays homage to a leading representative of the Kenyan ruling class.
Odinga’s political career had nothing to do with the struggle for democracy. From the outset, his central concern was to maintain bourgeois rule which rested on imperialist domination and preserve the capitalist exploitation of the Kenyan, African, and international working class.
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It is not surprising that Omole rushes to defend Odinga’s political record. His reaction underscores the historical role Stalinism has played in propping up and legitimising bourgeois figures, portraying them as progressive actors in a supposed democratic struggle.
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To say Odinga’s “politics never broke with imperialism” as Omole does, prettifies his role as an imperialist stooge who maintained close relations with every US and British ambassador since the 1990s.
During the 2007–2008 post-election violence, when the country was plunged into near civil war, US and European imperialism intervened to protect their geostrategic and economic interests. Recognizing that the path to stabilisation between the corrupt and tribalist factions of the Kenyan elite was the formation of a government of national unity, Odinga was tasked with striking a deal with President Mwai Kibaki. Under this Western-brokered arrangement, Kibaki retained the presidency while Odinga was installed in a newly created position of prime minister.
Odinga went on to fully back imperialism across Africa. He endorsed France’s 2011 imperialist intervention in Ivory Coast and backed Kenya’s illegal US-supported invasion of Somalia that same year. Later given a fig leaf of legality through the United Nations, the invasion of Somalia was justified under the pretext of fighting Al-Shabaab but in reality served Washington’s objective of consolidating control over the Horn of Africa.
Omole openly supported this operation. As he admitted, “Regarding the issue of Somalia, we had a different policy. […] the Kenyan government was helpless to control the terrorists killing in our country. That is why, for a moment, we supported the military offensive against Al-Shabaab organizations in Somalia.” Ever since, thousands of Somalis have died at the hands of Kenyan troops and US-led drone operations launched from Kenyan soil.
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Omole’s claim that Odinga played a role in Kenya’s “bourgeois democratic struggle” expresses a distinctly Stalinist counter-revolutionary conception to block the revolutionary struggles of the working class. The two-stage theory developed by the Stalinist faction in the 1920s against Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition states insists that first there must be a national democratic revolution led by “progressive” bourgeois forces to achieve full independence and democracy. Only later, in an indefinite future is a socialist transformation possible.
This perspective has served, historically, to subordinate the working class to bourgeois nationalism across the former colonies—from China to Egypt to South Africa. It functions to justify alliances with sections of the capitalist class under the banner of “national development.”
Today CPM-K presents itself as the tribune of the “national democratic revolution,” advocating for the preservation of the profit system and a supposed national, state-led, path to developing Kenyan capitalism, as a first step to socialism. The CPM-K calls for a “mixed economic system where the state, private sector, and cooperative sector coexist”.
The two-stage perspective is bankrupt. In the epoch of imperialism, democratic and national tasks—land reform, economic sovereignty, and popular rule—cannot be separated from socialist ones. Only the independent mobilization of the working class, in alliance with oppressed layers across Africa and the world, can achieve these aims.
Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution begins from the recognition that in countries of belated capitalist development like Kenya, the capitalist class can no longer lead the struggles for democracy as it did in the bourgeois revolutions of the eighteenth century in the United States and France. Fearful of the proletariat and, in ex-colonial countries like Kenya, bound by a thousand threads to imperialist finance, the capitalists necessarily oppose democratic rule. Democracy can be established only by the working class seizing state power and placing all the resources of the economy under the control of the workers and oppressed masses.
To grasp why the Kenyan Stalinists would praise Odinga even while admitting his ties to imperialism, it is necessary to recall their historical lineage. The Communist Party Marxist–Kenya descends politically from the Mwakenya group of the 1980s and 1990s.
Mwakenya was an underground Maoist party that became the main “left” opposition to the Moi dictatorship, advocating for democracy, human rights, and national development, as opposed to the struggle for socialism. Its social base lay largely in the urban petty bourgeoisie, including students, professors, and sections of the professional class, whose grievances with Moi centred on exclusion from the state pie rather than on class exploitation. Mwakenya oriented itself to figures like Oginga Odinga and later his son Raila during the 1990s, seeing them as vehicles for a “progressive” national front.
When the multi-party elections were introduced in 1992 and the 24-year-old regime of Moi ended in 2002, many of Mwakenya members adapted to the new bourgeois order and rebranded themselves as reformists and democrats.
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A particularly revealing case is that of Mwandawiro Mghanga. As chairman of the University of Nairobi Students’ Organisation (SONU) in the early 1980s, Mghanga was among the most prominent student leaders of Mwakenya. Arrested and brutally tortured at the Nyayo House chambers, he spent months in detention before being released and fleeing into exile in Sweden. There, he presented himself as a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary, building contacts with international Stalinist networks. Upon returning to Kenya in the 1990s, he entered parliamentary politics, winning the Wundanyi seat in 2002 under Odinga-backed National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). After the NARC victory, Mghanga was appointed Assistant Minister for Foreign Affairs in President Mwai Kibaki’s first Cabinet.
Mghanga lost his parliamentary seat in the 2007 elections and subsequently became Chairman of the Communist Party of Kenya (CPK), the renamed successor of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). In 2022, a split happened within the CPK between Mghanga and Booker Omole, when Mghanga joined Ruto in his electoral front and then joined his government.
Mghanga's trajectory, like that of Omole today, vindicates the World Socialist Web Site’s analysis that Stalinist and Maoist currents in Kenya have functioned as political instruments of the national bourgeoisie, obstructing the independent mobilization of the working class.
This independence can only be secured through Trotskyism. This is why Omole, echoing generations of Stalinists before him, identifies Trotskyism as the chief threat to the CPM-K’s pro-capitalist, nationalist program. Earlier this year, in an international conference of Stalinists in Nairobi he called for “a fierce ideological struggle against all erroneous ideas,” specifically naming “Trotskyist and ultra-leftist deviations” that “must be defeated.”
This follows Omole’s hysterical diatribe against the WSWS, denouncing Trotskyism, praising Stalin’s purges of old Bolsheviks during the 1930s, and vowing to crush “Trotskyist deviations” with “iron discipline.”
Odinga’s legacy demonstrates that no amount of constitutional reform or national rhetoric can resolve the fundamental contradictions of Kenyan society. The same petty-bourgeois layers that once rallied behind Mwakenya now serve as the ideological cover for a new generation of “lefts” who fear revolutionary change more than they oppose imperialism.
The central task before Kenyan workers and youth is to break decisively from this heritage—to reject both the ruling elite and its Stalinist shadow—and to build a Marxist movement grounded in the international unity of the working class. Only through such a perspective can the promise contained in Omole’s own closing words, “reforms die, revolutions live,” acquire genuine revolutionary meaning.
7. Madagascar president Rajoelina flees to France amid mass Gen Z protest
On October 14, 2025, President Andry Rajoelina was toppled following a massive popular mobilization and subsequent military intervention. Facing “Gen Z” protests that began in late September, Rajoelina was removed by a vote in the National Assembly, while the military unit CAPSAT declared it was “taking power” in front of the presidential palace in Antananarivo.
Colonel Michael Randrianirina, the head of CAPSAT, announced the dissolution of the Senate and the High Constitutional Court, while maintaining the National Assembly’s operations. He declared the formation of a military committee to oversee the transitional presidency pending the establishment of a civilian government. Significantly, CAPSAT backed Rajoelina during his rise to power in 2009. Its alignment this time with the protesters signals deep fractures within the Malagasy bourgeois state and establishment.
According to multiple sources, Andry Rajoelina fled Madagascar on October 12 aboard a French military aircraft, in an operation coordinated with Paris and approved by President Emmanuel Macron. This exfiltration, confirmed by RFI and France 24, reveals France’s active role in safeguarding its strategic interests in a former colony where its economic and military presence remains strong.
Macron emphasized the need to preserve “constitutional order,” without ever condemning the repression or the role of the Malagasy army. The complicit silence of the former colonial power underscores the imperialist nature of its intervention, aimed solely at protecting the interests of international capital.
his military overthrow follows several weeks of mass popular protests, initiated by a Gen Z collective that crystallized the anger of Malagasy youth around demands like an end to water and electricity cuts, fighting corruption, improved living conditions, and the president’s resignation. The movement quickly expanded, gaining support from union confederations, civil servants and demonstrators of all ages.
The regime’s response was brutal: live ammunition, tear gas, mass arrests. According to the UN, at least 22 people have been killed and over a hundred injured since the protests began.
The government’s militarization, marked by the appointment of General Zafisambo as Prime Minister on October 6, only deepened the crisis. Confronted with a population where over 75 percent live below the poverty line on less than €0.80 per day, the regime failed to address social demands, opting instead for repression.
The protest quickly moved beyond youth alone. The Malagasy Trade Union Solidarity collective, comprising around fifty unions, called for a general strike starting October 1, demanding Rajoelina’s resignation and a wage increase after a freeze since 2022. The teachers’ union SEMPAMA denounced the lack of educational resources and joined the mobilization.
Yet their role reflects the limits of trade unionism—in Madagascar and globally. While verbally supporting the social explosion, they also call on the Church and local elites for “dialogue,” aiming to prevent any revolutionary movement. Their orientation remains one of institutional compromise, which fails to address the structural roots of poverty—capitalism—and the need for independent revolutionary organization of the working class.
Several opposition parties, including Tiako i Madagasikara (TIM) and Malagasy Miara-Miainga (MMM), have tried to position themselves as alternatives to Rajoelina’s regime. But their role remains essentially opportunistic: channeling popular anger into the narrow framework of institutional negotiations while safeguarding the foundations of capitalism.
While the mass mobilization advances social demands that can only be met through a struggle for workers’ power and socialism, the army’s intervention aims to defend bourgeois order and preserve the interests of imperialism and the national bourgeoisie.
Bitter experience shows that military interventions in popular uprisings do not aim to fulfill the aspirations of the masses. In Egypt and Tunisia in 2011, the supposed neutrality or support of the army served to defuse mobilization, restore bourgeois order, and ensure the continuity of the capitalist system under a new facade.
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The Malagasy uprising is part of a global wave of worker and student mobilizations against deteriorating social conditions, the rise of authoritarian regimes and the deepening capitalist crisis. Gen Z movements in Morocco, mass strikes in Peru, workers’ struggles in Europe, and mobilizations across Africa all reflect a profound, growing rejection of austerity, militarism and the established social order.
But without revolutionary socialist leadership, spontaneous movements—no matter how massive—will be diverted, repressed or drowned in institutional compromise. The Gen Z collective, despite its mobilizing strength, lacks clear political orientation. If the working class does not organize independently, on a socialist and internationalist basis, the military regime will ultimately impose a new form of dictatorship defending the interests of capital.
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Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution sheds light on the current situation. In countries dominated by imperialism, the national bourgeoisie cannot accomplish basic democratic tasks—such as eradicating poverty, providing public services or ensuring popular sovereignty—because it is organically linked to international capital. Only the working class, organized independently of all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois forces, can carry these struggles to completion.
As it takes power, it must link democratic demands to an internationalist socialist program, uniting with workers globally in a common struggle against world capitalism.
The struggle of Malagasy workers can only succeed if it becomes part of an international movement of the working class. Strikes in Europe, mobilizations in Africa and uprisings in Latin America are all part of the same global movement against austerity, dictatorship and war—one that demands the conscious unification of workers across borders on the basis of an internationalist socialist program.
The Malagasy crisis is not an isolated phenomenon: it is an expression of the bankruptcy of capitalism. Madagascar’s youth and workers must learn from past experiences and organize independently in rank-and-file committees, on a socialist and internationalist basis. The great political task is to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) in Madagascar and across Africa, to provide revolutionary leadership to such a movement in the working class.
The World Socialist Web Site is publishing a letter from Maan Alkaisi, whose wife Dr. Maysoon Abbas died in the Christchurch, New Zealand, earthquake on February 22, 2011, to the families of the 16 workers killed in the explosion at Accurate Energetic Systems’ factory in Tennessee.
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Maan Alkaisi:
"Our loved ones cannot speak and defend themselves, we will, and we will fight for justice and accountability until justice for victims is done."
9. Australia: Labor’s first home buyer scheme will drive house prices even higher
The Australian federal Labor government’s expanded Home Guarantee Scheme came into effect on October 1, allowing all first home buyers, regardless of income, to take out a mortgage with just a 5 percent deposit.
Economists are warning that the scheme, which will do nothing to resolve the shortage of affordable housing, will lock millions of workers into home loans they cannot pay off and further inflate average housing prices.
Outside of the scheme, buyers need to put down a 20 percent deposit to avoid being forced to pay Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI), which adds tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of buying a home and which only serves to limit risk to the banks. Under the scheme, the federal government acts as guarantor for the remainder of the deposit, negating the LMI requirement.
According to Money.com.au, the average first home buyer deposit is now $159,000, 50 percent higher than in 2020. The average median-income household needs more than 10 years to save for such a downpayment, property data research firm CoreLogic states.
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This scheme will only add fuel to the fire. It is designed to further stimulate the over-inflated property market that has put home ownership beyond the reach of workers.
The scheme has been welcomed by the banks, which are looking forward to signing potentially tens of thousands of new customers up to even larger mortgages, with the federal government taking on all the additional risk.
Home buyers taking out a loan for 95 percent (rather than 80 percent) of the $848,858 median dwelling cost would pay almost $133,000 in additional interest over the course of the mortgage, according to estimates by Cotality.
This will plunge first home buyers into a nightmare of crippling mortgage repayments when, according to the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC), new mortgagees are already having to spend on average 50 percent of household income on loan repayments.
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Like these measures, the Home Guarantee Scheme will do nothing to resolve the deepening housing crisis, a manifestation of the capitalist system, which allows property billionaires to hoard land for their own profit. The scheme will saddle working-class Australians with even more debt, increase the price of homes and boost the profits of the banks.
Token gestures by federal governments are not the way forward for the working class. Housing should be a basic human right, but under capitalism, it is a profit center for the wealthy. This means that workers need to fight for a political alternative—a workers’ government to carry out a socialist program, including placing the banks, property developers and other major corporations under public ownership and democratic workers’ control. Only then can society’s vast resources be devoted to fulfilling real social needs, including high quality housing for all, rather than boosting the wealth of the financial elite.
10. Spain: 4 construction workers die in Madrid construction site collapse
On October 7, a building undergoing renovation in central Madrid to be converted into a luxury hotel collapsed, burying and killing four of the workers.
The deceased included the site manager, Spanish national Laura Rodríguez, and three migrant workers: Moussa Dembelé (from Mali), Jorge Velazquez (from Ecuador), and Diallo Mamadún Alpha (from Guinea). Workers like these are the ones targeted by the fascist party Vox, which calls for their expulsion from Spain if they fail to integrate, or whom the PSOE–Podemos government described to NATO in 2022 as a “hybrid threat” against which it deploys the military along African borders.
The reality is that in Spain, they represent the most vulnerable and unprotected sector of the working class, the cannon fodder exploited by business owners.
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The unions acknowledge this wave of deaths as they stand aside and watch it unfold. According to Pilar Ituero, Secretary of Occupational Health at UGT, a union aligned with the PSOE, “Our impression is that there tends to be a parallel pattern between construction productivity and accident rates. The more work is done, the more pressure is placed on employees, and the more deaths occur.”
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This form of social murder—workplace deaths—occurs all over the world, as shown by the death of 16 workers in a munitions plant in Tennessee. It is an endemic evil of capitalism that neither employers nor their governments will resolve, only the workers themselves can.
As the World Socialist Web Site pointed out in response to the Tennessee massacre, it is necessary to form “Rank-and-file safety committees, organized independently by workers themselves, to take control of workplace safety, demand full transparency in investigations, and link up with other sections of workers across industries and states to build a unified network of rank-and-file committees capable of asserting democratic control over working conditions and prioritizing the lives of all workers over profit.”
11. Tech jobs bloodbath continues with Amazon announcing new round of layoffs
Amazon announced last week that it would be cutting thousands of employees as part of an ongoing series of layoffs at the tech giant. The move follows a previous series of massive job cuts at the company and in the technology sector as a whole.
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It is becoming clear that the recent round of tech layoffs is not part of a typical hiring boom-and-bust cycle. It is the result of a permanent restructuring process across the industry in which highly skilled workers, at least those who remain, will be facing ever greater exploitation and be forced to work even longer hours for even lower pay. The current job cutting process is underway while most large tech concerns are still experiencing massive increases in profits and stock valuations.
According to a recent article in TechCruch, more than 150,000 tech workers lost their jobs in 2024 and another 22,000 lost positions since the start of this year.
The latter includes:
355 Oracle workers in September at the company’s San Francisco and Seattle offices, which followed 101 job cuts at its Santa Clara, California location and 200 layoffs at its Pleasanton and Redwood City offices in the San Francisco Bay area earlier in the year. Oracle stock has risen 74.81 percent year to date as it moves to position itself as a key player in the growing AI infrastructure market.
221 positions at Cisco’s Milpitas, California and San Francisco offices as part of the networking giant’s long-term workforce-reduction strategy.
Chipmaker Intel plans to cut 2,400 Oregon-based workers on top of the 4,000 already laid off in July and 21,000 in April. The company let go a similarly staggering 15,000 workers last year.
Indeed and Glassdoor, both owned by parent company Recruit Holdings, announced they plan to eliminate approximately 1,300 jobs combined in the US, including in Human Resources, Research and Development and its sustainability teams.
On November 3, Salesforce will eliminate 262 jobs at its San Francisco headquarters, following a reduction of 93 workers in Washington state in September. CEO Marc Benioff made headlines earlier this month by recommending that the Trump administration send federal troops to San Francisco, sentiments which were echoed by Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.
Facebook parent company Meta cut 5 percent of its 72,000 employees in January, as it courts favor with the Trump administration and prepares for an “intense year,” according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg with the company making massive investments in AI technology.
Also significant and not included in most reporting of the tech worker layoffs were government tech workers, many of whom played critical roles at Social Security and Medicare. Of the approximately 300,000 federal workers pushed out during Trump’s second term both before and after the government shutdown, thousands were undoubtedly tech workers. They are now facing the near impossibility of finding similar roles in the private sector.
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The mass layoffs, tantamount to an open declaration of war against the working class, have hardly evoked a murmur of protest from the trade union bureaucracies, which have opposed any mass strike action. Instead, labor officials, including in the federal government unions, have carried out impotent court appeals and proposed letter writing and phone campaigns to Democratic Party politicians.
12. More than 2,000 striking Turkish TPI workers laid off
TPI Composite (XCS Composite) announced on October 10 that nearly all of its workers had been laid off. It was announced that 405 workers would be laid off from the company’s factory in İzmir-Çiğli and 1,735 workers from its factory in İzmir-Menemen. The workers have been on strike since May 13.
The mass layoffs are an example of the working class being made to pay the full price of the economic crisis and are part of a global assault on jobs and living conditions.
n August, TPI’s US headquarters filed for bankruptcy. Following this, TPI Composite’s facilities in Turkey were handed over to XCS Composite, newly established in Dubai and believed to be a shell company. Workers claim that the company has been stripped of its assets. Despite these developments signalling impending layoffs and attacks on workers’ accrued rights and compensation, the Petrol-İş trade union has offered no means of struggle.
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The anger of TPI Composite workers toward Petrol-İş is not solely due to the recent layoffs. Workers are employed at poverty-level wages because the union is collaborating with the company.
The workers say their monthly wages are around 23,000 Turkish Liras (₺) [US $548.43], which is the minimum wage, and their daily meal allowance is ₺122 [US $2.91]. According to a report by Türk-İş Confederation, of which Petrol-İş is an affiliate, last month the hunger threshold for a family of four was ₺27,970 [US $666.94], and the poverty threshold was ₺91,109 [US $2,172.49].
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Workers accuse the trade union officials of failing to take measures against the mass layoffs. The liquidation of jobs and attacks on social rights around the world are being carried out with the cooperation of trade union apparatus that function as extensions of the state and companies.
Petrol-İş, which pseudo left groups refer to as a “combative trade union,” offers workers nothing but acceptance of defeat and filing individual compensation lawsuits in court. At the same time, the government is escalating its social offensive against the working class in order to transfer resources to corporations, banks, and militarism.
The mass dismissal of over two thousand workers is an unacceptable attack. The notion that companies have the “right” to arbitrarily dismiss workers must be rejected. Ending this threat requires the nationalization of companies to serve the needs of society, not private profit and wealth. The International Workers’ Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) is fighting for workers worldwide to unite against the attacks of capitalist companies and states on a common program and organization independent of the union apparatus.
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During the past decades, the trade unions have played a major role in breaking strikes, lowering wages, eliminating benefits, cutting jobs and shutting down factories. During this process, despite the loss of membership, the revenues of the trade unions and the salaries of their functionaries have continued to rise. Insulated from and indifferent to the hardships suffered by their membership and protected by the “dues check-off” and labor laws from rank-and-file protests, the unions are tied by a thousand threads to the corporations and the capitalist state.
The way forward for TPI Composite workers is to take matters into their own hands, build rank-and-file committees independent of the union leadership, and unite their struggle with their class brothers and sisters across Turkey and around the world.
13. United Kingdom: Labour council doubles down on Birmingham bin [sanitation] workers
Birmingham’s Labour Party-run city council is doubling down on vicious methods aimed at crushing the city’s bin workers’ strike that began in January. The 400 refuse collection workers launched all-out indefinite action on March 11.
Bin loaders and drivers across the city’s three depots have mounted determined resistance to the downgrading of their jobs, with annual pay cuts of up to £8,000, abolition of the safety-critical Waste Reduction and Collection Officer (WRCO) role, axing 150 posts and reducing crew sizes by a quarter.
In September, workers renewed their strike with a 99.5 percent mandate, extending it until March 2026—a show of defiance that has deepened the council’s resolve to break them.
Over the past week, the Labour authority led by John Cotton has launched a battery of attacks on strikers. It has hauled Unite the union before the High Court over alleged breaches of picketing restrictions. Agency staff recruited to replace strikers have been threatened with blacklisting if they cross pickets, while strikers have been put on notice with the commencement of compulsory redundancies.
The Birmingham strike is a test bed for the Starmer government’s austerity agenda against the entire working class. It greenlit the declaration of a “major incident” by its flagship council on March 31, to justify an unprecedented strike-breaking operation: military planners were drafted in to coordinate mass recruitment of agency staff from neighbouring councils and private contractors, and police were deployed with powers under Section 14 of the Public Order Act to threaten pickets with fines and imprisonment.
But Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham has refused to mobilise the union’s million-plus members in defense of the embattled workers, isolating this pivotal strike and thereby emboldening ever more draconian attacks.
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The Birmingham bin workers’ fight is in the eleventh hour. Its success depends on a mass mobilization of the working class against Starmer’s authoritarian methods being used to spearhead austerity. Pseudo-left groups such as the Socialist Party and Socialist Workers Party have abetted Unite’s isolation of the dispute. Their promotion of token “mega-pickets” in May and July were used by union officials to spout empty words of “solidarity” while justifying their continued partnership with Labour based on the claim they can be pressured to “do the right thing.”
A new path of struggle must be opened. The Birmingham bin strike can and must be won—but not through stunts, hollow appeals, or reliance on the union bureaucracy. A rank-and-file strike committee must be formed to take control of the dispute and break its isolation, issuing an appeal to council workers nationwide for a collective fight against austerity and the frontal assault on workers’ rights by the Starmer government.
The Starmer government is redirecting billions to war and rearmament. It has pledged to raise defense spending to 5 percent of GDP and to boost corporate profits at the direct expense of workers’ livelihoods. The defense of Birmingham refuse workers is essential preparation for a broader counter-offensive by the working class challenging the Starmer government’s agenda of austerity, authoritarianism and war.
Bus drivers spoke to the World Socialist Web Site after the Unite union pushed through deals concocted behind closed doors in collusion with Labour Mayor Andy Burnham and three bus companies, at their operations in Greater Manchester, England.
The Stagecoach, Metroline and First Bus private companies operate as franchises under the “Bee Network”—coordinated by TfGM (Transport for Greater Manchester) under the control of the Greater Manchester Authority comprising 10 councils—headed by Burnham.
Workers learned at the eleventh hour that Unite had suspended strike action planned for October 10, 11 and 13 by 2,000 drivers at Stagecoach and Metroline. They had no chance to scrutinise and discuss what was being offered.
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A driver at Oldham said, “I wanted a one-year deal… the rich get richer. When you’re on strike and losing money, you just take the deal.”
His colleague agreed, saying, “That deal could have been better, it shouldn’t have been over two years,” expressing concern that inflation would eat up the rise.
Another driver explained, “I think the union got most of the drivers to vote yes because of the backpay and Christmas coming,” he said. “The pay negotiations took so long, it started in April. Many of the drivers have to live beyond their means and are in debt.”
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In relation to anti-immigrant xenophobia being whipped up by the Starmer government, in competition with the Tories and Reform Party, he said, “They cause conflicts to deflect [from the rising cost of living]. The main problem is the government. It’s gone downhill since the 2008 crash, and who’s going to fix it?
“Everyone in this country needs to stand up and walk out. We all need to go on strike. I’ve been thinking for the last year about all these things.”
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The Bee Network is a form of privatization supported and subsidized by state funding and has nothing in common with genuine public control of transport, which Burnham boasts it is. TfGM purchased new electric buses manufactured by private companies from central government funding. On behalf of the bus companies which are raking in profits, TfGM coordinates the bus routes and timetables.
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The unions betrayed the struggle against privatization of state industries and the anti-strike laws—introduced under the Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government (1979-90) and continued and extended by all successive governments including Labour.
Bee Network workers should establish a rank-and-file committee across the companies independent of the Unite bureaucracy to unify their struggles—to continue the fight for better wages and conditions, linked to taking control and ownership of transport out of the hands of the profiteers.
Britain’s Labour government has mounted an unprecedented campaign to reverse a police ban on hooligans from Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv football team from attending a match against Aston Villa.
With the match due to go ahead on November 6, last week Birmingham City Council’s Safety Advisory Group (SAG) decided to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters from attending. Aston Villa were advised of the decision on October 16. The decision was backed by West Midland’s Police (WMP) who stated that the ban “will help mitigate risks to public safety”.
Birmingham is the second largest city in the UK. It has a large Muslim population, who have played a major role in protests and marches held regularly in the city and nationally over the past two years against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians.
Given the violent record of the Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters, of which a substantial element are “ultra” hooligans notorious for their close ties to the Israeli state and armed forces, any other decision would have been perverse.
In its October 16 statement, WMP said, “While the Safety Certificate is issued by Birmingham City Council, West Midlands Police supports the decision to prohibit away supporters from attending… we have classified the upcoming Aston Villa vs Maccabi Tel-Aviv fixture as high risk.”
It noted, “This decision is based on current intelligence and previous incidents, including violent clashes and hate crime offences that occurred during the 2024 Europa League match between Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv in Amsterdam.”
In their attempt to reverse the ban, a government spokesperson said of this risk assessment, “No one should be stopped from watching a football game simply because of who they are.” This is staggering. Regarding the fascistic hooligans who follow Maccabi Tel Aviv, and who specifically target Muslims—it very much does matter who they are.
During their rampage in Amsterdam, last November 6-7, Maccabi’s hooligans terrorized the local Muslim population and opponents of the genocide, tearing up Palestinian flags, hitting taxis driven by Arabic drivers with crowbars, and chanting pro-genocide slogans. These included, “There are no schools in Gaza because there are no children left,” “F*ck Palestine,” “IDF [Israel Defense Forces] f*ck the Arabs,” and “Death to Arabs! We will win.”
This followed an attack and the hospitalization the previous March of a man carrying a Palestinian flag, by group of Maccabi thugs, prior to a game against Olympiacos in Athens.
Similar songs were repeated in the Romanian capital Bucharest when Maccabi hooligans were allowed to visit in July this year.
Amid howls of outrage from the government, the opposition Conservative Party and the media over the supposed antisemitic character of the ban, the fears of those warning of the implications of allowing Maccabi’s thugs onto Birmingham’s streets were dramatically vindicated.
On Sunday evening, police in Tel Aviv were forced to call off—before the game began—a local derby match between Maccabi and rivals Hapoel after fans rioted outside and inside their shared Bloomfield Stadium. Police announced there were 12 injuries to people caused by smoke grenades and pyrotechnic devices thrown by thugs. Stating “this is not a soccer game, this is a breach of order and serious violence,” with three officers injured, police called the match off declaring “risks to human life”.
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The provocative decision by the Starmer government to try and reverse a decision that could lead to large-scale disorder and see lives threatened in a major British city is the latest manifestation of its support for Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians and onslaught on the democratic rights of its opponents.
Throughout the genocide, firstly the Sunak government and then Starmer’s regularly cited the “operational independence” of the police when severe restrictions, drawn up in collaboration with Downing Street, were imposed on protests against the Gaza genocide.
Immediately prior to declaring his opposition to the ban, Starmer visited the London HQ of Zionist group the Community Security Trust (CST). There he announced that the CST would receive a further £10 million in government funding, on top of £72 million being handed over covering 2024-28. Starmer took the opportunity to condemn a popular chant of the anti-genocide marchers, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” as “clearly antisemitic” which “we need to deal with… much more robustly, in my view”.
Bans on chants are being considered together with draconian new legal guidelines on the “cumulative impact” of protests, both aimed at the now over 30 national demonstrations against genocide and mass slaughter held in London, and thousands more demos in other cities. The government is already seeking to ban protests entirely or ensure they are so heavily restricted as to be ineffective.
16. 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.
