Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Nearly 46,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers set to strike October 14
Healthcare unions representing nearly 46,000 Kaiser Permanente workers filed a 10-day strike notice on Friday. The walkout, organized by the Alliance of Health Care Unions (AHCU), is scheduled to begin on October 14 and last five days. It would primarily affect California and other West Coast states, with thousands of workers also participating in Hawaii. The notice follows last month’s overwhelming strike authorization vote, in which 97 percent voted in favor.
The strike is a powerful expression of the growing opposition of healthcare workers, and of the working class as a whole, to intolerable conditions. The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party hail the courageous stand taken by Kaiser workers and call for the broadest possible support. Workers across the country should take up solidarity actions to link the struggle at Kaiser to a wider counteroffensive of the working class against corporate dictatorship.
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The conditions Kaiser workers are fighting are universal across the healthcare industry: unsafe staffing ratios, pay raises that lag far behind inflation, and relentless overwork that has driven countless workers to leave the profession. Kaiser, a vast healthcare consortium serving nearly a quarter of California’s population, can more than afford workers’ demands. Last year, it tripled its “net income” (so named because Kaiser is officially a “nonprofit”) to $12.9 billion and increased its net worth to $74.1 billion, including $66.4 billion in cash and investments.
The corporate assault on healthcare reached a new stage during the pandemic, as hospitals were overwhelmed due to the refusal of the ruling class to take measures to stop the spread of the virus. The consequences have been catastrophic: for the first time in US history outside of wartime, life expectancy has undergone a prolonged decline.
The fight at Kaiser is, at its core, a fight against inequality and the subordination of healthcare to profit. Healthcare is deliberately starved of resources, producing preventable illness and death, while billions are funneled into the profits of the healthcare giants and the inflation of Wall Street bubbles. In the very cities where Kaiser workers care for patients, schools and other public services are being gutted, even as the federal government accelerates the dismantling of essential social programs.
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It is significant that the strike would take place in many of the same cities targeted for invasion by the National Guard, especially Los Angeles. The occupation of these cities is aimed at dealing with what Trump calls the “enemy within.”
Also highly significant is the fact that the last day of the strike would be October 18, the day of nationwide “No Kings” protests, which are expected to draw millions against Trump’s drive to dictatorship.
Against the fascist policy of destroying healthcare, workers must demand healthcare as a social right for all. This requires the expropriation of the private healthcare industry and the creation of a public healthcare system under the direction of healthcare workers themselves, not corporate politicians. This is inseparable from the expropriation of the billionaires and major corporations, whose existence is not compatible with democracy.
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Such a fight requires new organizations animated by an independent strategy based on the fight for workers’ power. Rank-and-file committees across the country must become the basic organizational form for the working class struggle against Trump.
There is a precedent for such organizations. In 2021, Kaiser workers formed the Kaiser Workers Rank-and-File Committee in opposition to the last sellout contract. The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), which includes committees all over the world, conducted the Global Workers’ Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic, taking testimony from some of the world’s leading health experts to cut through the lies of the corporate media.
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A fight will never be organized by the union bureaucracy. They have done nothing to oppose Trump’s coup plans and, in many cases, have openly collaborated with him. The mass mobilization needed to defeat Trump runs directly counter to their six-figure salaries, government ties and corporate partnerships, all of which rest on their ability to enforce “labor peace” and suppress workers’ struggles.
This is especially clear at Kaiser Permanente, where for decades, the unions have participated in the Labor Management Partnership funded by millions in Kaiser money.
These bureaucracies have sold out one struggle after another....
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The bureaucracy is doing everything possible to limit and blunt the impact of the current strike. There is no guarantee the AHCU will even allow it to proceed. In 2021, the unions called off a strike with less than 24 hours’ notice. Having now issued the legally required 10-day notice, they will use that time to feverishly search for a way to block the walkout, whether through a sellout deal or some other maneuver.
In their strike vote, however, workers made their decision clear. They must organize rank-and-file committees to give themselves the means to enforce their decision through independent action.
They must also not allow the strike to be limited in advance to five days, which Kaiser will easily be able to ride out. The committees must fight for an indefinite strike until all of their demands have been met. They must fan out for support in the working class neighborhoods they serve, as well as in major workplaces across the country, and build support among healthcare workers everywhere.
2. United States: Mississippi declares public health emergency over surging infant deaths
The Mississippi State Health Department declared a public health emergency in August following a dramatic surge in infant mortality in the state. According to MSHD data, Mississippi’s infant mortality rate (IMR)—deaths within the first year of life—rose to 9.7 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2024, marking the highest rate in more than a decade.
This emergency is a signal that the smallest innocent lives are being held hostage by a health system in America that judges its success, not by the thriving of mothers and babies, but by the profits hauled in by private insurers, pharmaceuticals and other health-related conglomerates. Those women and their families who rely on social programs put in place to protect the most vulnerable are paying the ultimate price for the savage cuts being implemented by both big business parties.
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Dr. Daniel Edney, the Mississippi state health officer, stated that if babies “dying at the rate that our babies are dying is not a public health emergency, I don’t know what is.” Dr. Michael Warren, chief medical and health officer for the nonprofit March of Dimes, told Jefferson Public Radio that the US is “one of the most dangerous developed countries for giving birth,” noting that the 20,000 infant deaths annually nationwide are “the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing once a week for an entire year and killing everyone on board.”
The causes of infant death in Mississippi—including congenital malformations, prematurity, low birth weight, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)—are inextricably linked to an acute lack of medical infrastructure. More than half of the counties in Mississippi are considered maternity healthcare deserts, lacking access to comprehensive prenatal care. Obstetricians are few and far between and often see patients for the first time late in pregnancy, sometimes when they are close to delivery or already in labor.
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Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves, like many of his Republican counterparts, aggressively resisted expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Medicaid is a crucial resource, covering nearly 53 percent of births in Mississippi and 40 percent nationwide. Without access to Medicaid, many low-income women are left uninsured before and between pregnancies.
Experts emphasize that untreated chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension prior to conception are major contributors to preterm births and subsequent infant deaths, making preconception care critical.
Inadequate prenatal care, poverty and being a single mother are all associated with increased infant mortality rates. For low-income women managing high-risk pregnancies, such as those involving hypertension, pre-eclampsia, and fetal growth restriction, specialist care—which may require expensive travel—is often financially unattainable.
The IMR figures demonstrate that the burden of this mortality crisis falls overwhelmingly on poor and black families. In Mississippi, the infant mortality rate for African American babies was 15.2 per 1,000 live births in 2024, Time magazine reports, a rate that is more than double the rate for white families (5.8 per 1,000). Nationally, non-Hispanic black infants suffer a mortality rate more than two times the rate of non-Hispanic white infants.
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A comparison of Mississippi to other states, and the US to Europe, clearly shows that poor health outcomes are concentrated among the most impoverished segments of society. Infant mortality rates are highest in Deep South, including in Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. States that did expand Medicaid, such as Arkansas and Louisiana, saw measurable improvements, including a 29 percent reduction in black infant mortality in Arkansas in the five years post-Medicaid expansion, CBS News Health Watch reports.
This class disparity is the key distinguishing factor between the US and its industrialized counterparts. The overall US IMR is 71 percent higher than the comparable country average, with this disparity driven almost entirely by higher mortality rates among lower income groups in the US.
Infants born to better-off white mothers with partners have mortality rates that are statistically indistinguishable from their affluent counterparts in countries like Austria or Finland. In contrast, economically disadvantaged US groups experience significantly worse outcomes, particularly during the postneonatal period (1–12 months), a finding that correlates to inadequate social supports after birth, the National Bureau of Economic Research reports.
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The worsening infant mortality crisis is accelerating under the deliberate policies of the Trump administration, which has launched a two-pronged attack: mass cuts to social services and a politically motivated war on science.
The budget bill passed by the House aims to slash $930 billion from Medicaid, Medicare and Affordable Care Act (ACA) funding combined over 10 years. Experts calculate that cuts of this magnitude will result in more than 51,000 additional deaths per year by decreasing access to healthcare.
The cutbacks are projected to cause millions to lose health coverage, including an estimated 6 million women of reproductive age who gained access through ACA expansion.
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Simultaneously, the administration has waged an extreme assault on medical science. The government has carried out a systematic campaign against scientific institutions, cutting the positions of over 20,000 federal public health workers and scientists, canceling over 800 research grants, and imposing crippling budget cuts on all Health and Human Services (HHS) agencies.
Programs designed to protect mothers and infants are directly targeted. The Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) program vital for tracking maternal and infant health trends, has been targeted for elimination. As one former CDC staffer noted in comments to StatNews, cutting vital maternal and child health programs when crises are rising is “willful ignorance,” warning that “without robust data, we are flying blind”.
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The tragic crisis in Mississippi confirms that the policies of the ruling class—under both the Republicans and Democrats—are dedicated to lowering workers’ life expectancy, gutting social services and defending corporate profits. The infant mortality crisis is a reflection of entrenched class inequities and ruling class policies aimed at the health of the entire working class.
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The defense of science, the preservation of Medicaid and the demand for comprehensive maternity care are fundamentally class issues. The independent mobilization of the working class based on a socialist program is required to secure basic social rights, including the right of every mother to a healthy pregnancy and every child to reach their first birthday and beyond. Only through the overthrow of the capitalist system, which elevates figures promoting social murder, can humanity defend itself against this accelerating public health catastrophe.
3. NYPD and ICE assault journalists in New York City
In two separate incidents in New York City this week, the New York Police Department (NYPD) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) thugs attacked journalists reporting on actions against the Gaza genocide and the federal rampage against immigrants.
In the first case, on Monday, the NYPD raided the home of photojournalist Alexa B. Wilkinson. Police arrested and charged Wilkinson with aggravated harassment and hate crimes. The police also arrested Wilkinson’s wife and guest and seized video equipment and phones.
The charges stemmed from a July 30 incident Wilkinson reported on, in which protesters covered the New York Times headquarters on 8th Avenue in Manhattan with graffiti. Protesters charged the newspaper with complicity in the Gaza genocide because of its pro-Zionist reporting and editorial policies. Wilkinson’s wife and guest were charged with contributing to the graffiti on the Times building.
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Wilkinson has been one of the leading photojournalists who has covered the mass protests against the Gaza genocide in New York City since they began in the fall of 2023, often at personal hazard to themselves from Zionists and the NYPD. The World Socialist Web Site has published their work.
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In the second incident on Tuesday, journalist L. Vural Elibol of the state-run Turkish news agency Anadolu was shoved and thrown to the ground by ICE goons as he attempted to board an elevator outside an immigration court on the 12th floor in 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan. The elevator was taking immigrants kidnapped by ICE to detention on the building’s 10th floor. Elibol struck his head on the ground and had to be taken to the hospital.
Two other journalists were also brutalized by ICE in the same incident, including Dean Moses, amNewYork’s police bureau chief and resident photographer, and freelancer Olga Fedorova, whose work is frequently published by the Associated Press.
These back-to-back attacks on journalists in the Democratic Party stronghold of New York City mark a bipartisan escalation of Trump’s efforts to establish a dictatorship in the United States and silence all opposition to—and even knowledge of—the domestic and foreign policy of the ruling elite. It is noteworthy that while a variety of Democratic politicians condemned the ICE assault, neither Governor Kathy Hochul nor Democratic Socialists of America mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani condemned the blatantly political arrest of Wilkinson and their wife and guest by the NYPD.
The action by the NYPD, which had to be approved at the highest levels of the department and city government, is meant to send a message: the police, regardless of who is mayor, will continue to harass, arrest, and beat pro-Palestinian protesters while suppressing journalists who report on these attacks. This takes place under conditions in which the Trump administration has not only unleashed ICE against immigrant workers throughout the US, but has also laid the groundwork for police-military dictatorship by sending troops to Washington D.C., Los Angeles, Portland and Memphis.
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At a rally on Wednesday in Manhattan’s Foley Square in defense of Wilkinson and the journalists assaulted by ICE, scores of journalists and supporters assembled to protest the blatant suppression of the First Amendment and the right to report objectively on the anti-genocide demonstrations and the right to report on the actions of state agencies.
One speaker told the rally: “We’re here for two different incidents that have motivated us to come out and flag you all and sound the alarm that journalism is under attack. The first being the arrest of a photojournalist for documenting a protest activity after it happened. Shame!
“Their home was raided in the middle of the morning, like an early morning pre-dawn raid. All of their equipment was taken so they cannot do their job … They are being charged with a hate crime for protected political speech against the executive editor of the New York Times, which has a well-documented history of whitewashing genocide. Shame!
“Not only is our work as journalists being attacked, but speech itself is under attack, not just in New York City, but nationally. This is a five-alarm fire for the press.”
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A speaker from Writers against the War on Gaza, which has played a leading role in exposing the New York Times’ pro-Zionist bias, told the rally: “In Gaza, journalists are stalked and harassed with threatening IOF phone calls. Their homes are bombed. Their families are bombed. They get arrested, tortured, and starved. They distance themselves from loved ones amidst a genocide because they know, as journalists, they wear a target. There are no special protections, no press vests that can save them …
“Here in the so-called land of the free press freedom, journalists who dare to fulfill their mandate to document reality and report the truth are facing escalating retaliation. They are surveilled, raided, harassed, assaulted and arrested for capturing the moments Empire would prefer to stay hidden.
“Just yesterday, journalists were brutalized by police at immigration court for simply recording the atrocities unfolding within the walls of 26 Federal Plaza. Across the country, those doing their duties as members of the press are being intimidated …
“The repression we’re seeing here is not separate from what is happening in Gaza. It is interconnected. The same military-industrial complex that arms Israel also trains US police forces. The same surveillance tech used to track and kill Palestinian journalists is sold back to US agencies. The same logic that justifies bombing press offices in Gaza or Yemen or any of the countries we’ve seen bombed over the past two years is what allows police here to assault reporters on the job.”
4. “Day of German Unity”: Germany’s leading conservative paper attacks Lenin
The front page of the online edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on October 3, the 35th anniversary of German unification, carried a frontal attack on Lenin. Under the headline “One must counter the myth that everything started out well,” the mouthpiece of the Frankfurt stock exchange complained: “Lenin still will not disappear even 35 years after reunification.”
What followed was a long screed of almost 3,000 words in which the leader of the Russian October Revolution was denounced as a “criminal” whose name, it was claimed, “leads to a trail of violence, blood and terror,” who stood for “dictatorship, violence and murder” and who “belongs in hell.” The piece asserted that Lenin had established a “system of terrorist surveillance and repression” whose tradition the SED (Socialist Unity Party) regime in the GDR (German Democratic Republic, East Germany) had continued. This was presented as “the true face of communism.”
The article relied on contemporary witnesses who had come into conflict with the Stalinist regime of the GDR and had been persecuted for distributing anti-SED leaflets or trying to flee to the West.
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At first glance, more than a hundred years after Lenin’s death, it may seem surprising that the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung would feel compelled to verbally beat the great revolutionary to death once more. Since the dissolution of the GDR and the Soviet Union 35 years ago it has repeatedly proclaimed that socialism had failed and no longer matters. Yet it is obvious that the paper’s editors themselves do not really believe this tale.
They have dug deep into the moth-eaten anti-communist propaganda of the Cold War because they fear that the revolutionary, Marxist perspective embodied by Lenin and his comrades—above all Leon Trotsky—could regain mass support. Their hatred of Lenin is an expression of their fear of socialist revolution.
Lenin’s political genius lay in grasping that the outbreak of the First World War—the greatest catastrophe in history to that point—represented the collapse of international capitalism, just as Marx had predicted.
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The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s attempt to present the October Revolution as the origin of “dictatorship, violence and murder” rests on hackneyed lies that have been refuted time and again. “Dictatorship, violence and murder” came from the imperialist powers, which imposed a civil war on the young workers’ state and relied on notorious butchers—such as the tsarist generals Kornilov, Denikin, Wrangel and Kolchak—who were infamous for conducting antisemitic pogroms.
The Bolsheviks also resorted to repressive measures, which, under civil-war conditions, were unavoidable. But equating coercive measures taken in a civil war with the later Stalinist terror is a gross historical falsification.
Stalin’s terror did not target the enemies of the revolution, but its leaders. The Great Terror of the late 1930s claimed several hundred thousand devoted revolutionaries, including almost the entire Lenin-era leadership of the Bolshevik Party and much of the command of the Red Army. Its climax came in August 1940 with the assassination of Leon Trotsky, who had built the Left Opposition internationally and in 1938 founded the Fourth International to defend Lenin’s legacy against Stalin.
Equating Leninism with Stalinism is the great historical lie of the 20th century; the more historical research refutes it, the more stubbornly it is repeated. It places the leaders of the revolution on a par with its gravediggers, equating victims with their murderers.
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Eventually it was the Stalinist bureaucracy itself—as Trotsky had warned—that took the initiative toward capitalist restoration. What Hitler’s tanks had not accomplished, Gorbachev, Yeltsin and their successors completed. They dissolved the Soviet Union and plundered the socialized property. In the East, the SED, which renamed itself the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), played an active role in introducing capitalism and in the integration of the GDR with West Germany.
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The bankruptcy of the Stalinist regimes and their policy of national socialism was a result of the contradiction between the global character of the world economy and the nation state system, which undermined all national-reformist programs—including those of social democracy and the unions. The same contradiction between world economy and the nation state heralded—the ICFI warned at the time—a new era of imperialist wars and fierce class struggles.
On the 35th anniversary of German reunification there can be no doubt that this warning was correct. Germany and the other NATO states are escalating the war against Russia, supporting the genocide in Gaza and spending trillions on war and rearmament, which they plan to recoup through massive attacks on the working class. The gap between rich and poor has taken on historically unprecedented proportions. Fascist tendencies are raising their heads everywhere, especially in the US, where Trump is building an authoritarian dictatorship. Against this, resistance is growing.
This is why the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published an attack on Lenin on its front page on the “Day of German Unity,” as it is called. Workers and young people should draw their own conclusions from this and study the history and perspective of the revolutionary socialist movement embodied today by the ICFI.
The World Socialist Web Site, published daily by the ICFI for 27 years, contains a vast wealth of lectures, background articles and analyses dealing with current and historical aspects of the Marxist movement and politics. They form the basis for arming the working class for the inevitable class battles ahead.
5. Police attack mass protest over wind-turbines in northern Sri Lanka
On September 29, thousands of workers, fishermen, youth and women participated in a mass shutdown demonstration in Mannar District, of Sri Lanka’s war-ravaged north, to condemn a brutal police attack on a peaceful nighttime protest over a wind-power project held on September 26. Monday’s event was organised by the Mannar Citizens Committee.
Leaders of the Mannar Citizens Committee presented a letter to the district’s chief government administrator to be sent to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake. The letter called for an investigation into the police attack and reiterated longstanding demands that the government halt the wind-power scheme. Residents oppose the project because of its detrimental impact on the environment and their living conditions.
In August, President Dissanayake met with Mannar Citizens Committee leaders, assuring them that he would delay the project until the environmental problems it caused were resolved.
However, on the evening of September 26, residents learned that wind turbines were, in fact, being transported to the construction site. At around 10 p.m., hundreds of peaceful protesters gathered, staging a sit-down on the main road into Mannar town and blocking transportation.
Protesters shouted slogans and argued with the police, accusing Dissanayake of betraying their demand to halt the project. Hundreds of armed police officers, including members of the notorious Special Task Force, brutally attacked the protesters with batons and shields. Several people, including women, were injured in the assault and hospitalised.
The next day, police filed a case in the Mannar Magistrate’s Court against nine protesters, including three who were injured in the assault, and Mannar Citizens Committee president, clergyman Marcus Adigalar. The case will be heard on November 17.
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Mannar is a 130-square-kilometre island connected to the mainland via a causeway. The majority of its 70,000 residents are Tamil, with a significant Muslim community. During Colombo’s brutal communal war (1983–2009) against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the population suffered ruthless military repression. A large mass grave was discovered in Mannar town, containing about 346 human skeletons, including those of 29 children.
The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) launched the first phase of the wind power project with World Bank aid in March 2019, after obtaining Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) approval from the Central Environmental Authority (CEA).
Wind turbine operations, however, led to declining fish populations, flooding caused by construction blocked the flow of water to the sea, and there was disruption to migratory bird patterns. Residents, many of whom rely on fishing for their livelihood, reported a drastic reduction in their catch. When the second phase of the project was proposed, the CEA submitted an impact assessment that specifically raised concerns about these issues.
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Adding to local anger is Colombo’s repeated attempt to promote the excavation of mineral-rich sands in the area. Australian company Titanium Sands Limited (TSL) has held a survey license since 2022.
Scientific studies show that Mannar Island holds valuable minerals such as ilmenite, rutile, zircon and garnet. According to the Colombo-based Sunday Times, the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau (GSMB) estimates that the area contains 53 million metric tons of these minerals.
TSL is currently in talks with the GSMB to secure a mining license, pending an environmental impact assessment, which has yet to be finalized due to community protests. Company director Jason Ferris told the Times that TSL has invested 2 billion rupees (US$6.6 million) so far and plans to invest 24 billion rupees once a license is granted. Reflecting growing opposition, young people held a protest in Mannar on August 6 under the slogan “Protect Black Soil.”
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On August 24, the government deployed police and the army to break a week-long national strike by postal workers, and on September 21, it invoked the Essential Services Act to threaten CEB employees protesting privatisation and job cuts. These are just two examples of how the government has violently suppressed workers and protesters in recent months.
Janodanaya Movement spokespeople have warned Mannar residents to beware of “power-hungry forces” attempting to exploit their grievances. This is a cynical diversion. In truth, it was the JVP/NPP that exploited those grievances to win power—only to betray them once in office.
Leaders of all the Tamil political parties—including the Ilankai Tamil Arasu Kachchi, Tamil National People’s Front and Tamil National Party—have issued token statements condemning the police attack and warning against “state terrorism.”
These claims are hollow. These parties—and the rest of the parliamentary opposition—support the government’s IMF-backed austerity policies, claiming they are necessary for “economic recovery.” The brutal police assault on the people of Mannar and the broader repression of workers and the poor is further evidence of the government’s shift toward dictatorial forms of rule.
The fight to defend the environment, living conditions and basic democratic rights against government repression and its big-business program requires the development of a unified movement of the working class across ethnic lines, based on an anti-capitalist and socialist program.
6. Australia: Western Sydney University boss thanks unions for sellout deal
Last Thursday afternoon, Western Sydney University (WSU) vice-chancellor and president George Williams sent an all-staff email thanking the two campus trade unions for their assistance in slashing jobs and restructuring the university.
“I am pleased to say that the dispute with the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) over our change process has been resolved,” Williams wrote. “I thank the union for their goodwill and constructive engagement, and also the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) and its leadership during this process.
“This means that our change process will now proceed and is back on track with the one week delay.”
That “change process” refers to the “Western Reset” restructuring of WSU to service the teaching and research requirements of the corporate elite, including the military industries. This is particularly occurring at the expense of arts and humanities, and the options available to students at the largely working-class university.
On Friday, the next day, Williams confirmed that the deal he had struck with the union leaderships meant that a “net loss” of 193 jobs would be imposed. Hundreds of other staff members in “disestablished” positions would be forced to compete against each other in a supposed “merit-based placement process” for “new roles” that are “suitable” for them.
This brutal process will enable the management to pick and choose staff members selectively, inevitably leading to more people being pushed out the door, including by demotions or transfers to distant campuses, far beyond Williams’ claim that the job losses will be confined to 193.
Williams’ message of appreciation came just hours after the NTEU bulldozed a resolution through a hastily-called online members’ meeting on Thursday morning to endorse the sellout despite considerable opposition and widespread questions of concern.
The NTEU branch president, David Burchell, anti-democratically prevented anyone from speaking against that motion, including WSU Rank-and-File Committee member Michael Head, defying numerous calls for Head and other opponents to be afforded the right to speak.
Burchell hailed the outcome as a “big win” for staff at WSU and across the university sector. He revealed that the agreement with Williams had been greeted with “jubilation” at an NTEU national council meeting—the day before the members were even informed of it, let alone asked to vote on it.
This bitter experience is a warning of what the NTEU is seeking to impose everywhere. It is another demonstration of the industrial policing role of the union apparatuses.
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Over the past three weeks the fraud of WSU’s “change proposal” consultation process under its enterprise agreements with the NTEU and CPSU has become glaring. Multiple Q&A sessions in faculties and departments have proved to be an insult, with questions unanswered.
During the NTEU meeting, Head and others intervened in the Zoom chat to oppose the sellout deal. Several people supported Head’s calls for the right to speak against the motion, but Burchell flatly refused to allow it.
One of Head’s chats on behalf of the WSU Rank-and-File Committee explained: “The NTEU and CPSU officials are covering up the underlying agenda of the Labor government by trying to blame mismanagement by individual vice-chancellors for the disaster across the entire sector.
“Not a word is being said about the fact that the Albanese government is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on military spending and developing a war economy, including via the AUKUS pact against China, while intensifying the financial pressure on the universities to restructure to align with the ‘national priorities’ set out in its Universities Accord in 2024.”
That financial pressure includes slashing international student enrollments and continuing the previous Liberal-National government’s “Job-ready Graduates” scheme that hiked the cost of three-year humanities degrees to more than $50,000, while cutting the funding to universities for delivering them.
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The record of the NTEU and CPSU can be understood only in the context of the transformation of the trade unions internationally from defensive organisations of the working class, always within the framework of wage labour, into industrial policing agencies. In Australia, this has taken the form of the anti-strike enterprise bargaining straitjacket first imposed by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the Hawke-Keating Labor governments in the 1980s and 1990s.
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Through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), we need to link up with workers everywhere and with the educators’ RFCs in the US, where the fascistic Trump administration is demolishing public education and demanding the total subordination of the universities to the needs of the ruling class and the development of a war economy.
As outlined at a recent online public meeting, the WSU and Macquarie University RFCs are calling for a unified campaign throughout the working class against the job cuts and pro-corporate, pro-military reshaping of tertiary education.
7. Israel’s criminal interception of the Sumud aid flotilla and the struggle to stop the Gaza genocide
The imperialist-backed Zionist regime’s illegal blocking of the Sumud flotilla from delivering aid to the genocide-stricken Palestinians in Gaza has produced a wave of global outrage. Since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) began intercepting the 42-ship convoy late Wednesday, demonstrations have erupted in numerous European and other countries, including Spain, Switzerland, Britain, France, Germany, Brazil, Argentina, and Turkey. On Friday, more than two million workers in Italy joined a one-day general strike called by the Italian General Confederation of Labour (CGIL).
Israel was enabled by the imperialists to carry out what amounted to piracy on the high seas. The IDF seized control of the vast quantities of aid carried by the ships and detained over 400 activists for the “crime” of assisting the Palestinians as they face extermination. Ships from the Italian and Spanish navies, which had made a show of accompanying the flotilla but in reality sought to divert it from Gaza, were carefully withdrawn or stood down to facilitate the IDF’s dirty work. The activists will be deported to Europe, while Israel will withhold the aid so that Gaza’s population continues to starve.
The response to this latest war crime perpetrated by Israel reveals the vast gulf that exists between the rulers in the North American and European imperialist centers and the working class. Israel’s systematic denial of aid to millions, while the IDF’s daily slaughter of Palestinians goes on unabated, meets with revulsion among the vast majority of the population. Meanwhile, the imperialists back the starvation of Gaza by continuing to supply Israel with military equipment and by organizing brutal attacks on the spontaneous protests and strikes that have broken out in support of the flotilla.
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Workers and young people are horrified by the massive crime against humanity being carried out in Gaza. In the past six weeks, some 446,000 Palestinians have been ethnically cleansed from Gaza City during the IDF’s ground offensive, more than 10,000 per day, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC). “In Gaza City, hundreds of thousands are encircled by shelling, drones and ground troops, denied aid, and ordered to move without safe passage. Life has been reduced to a fight for water and bread,” said NRC head Jan Egeland on Thursday.
Across the enclave, over 65,000 deaths have officially been recorded since Israel’s onslaught began in October 2023, but estimates suggest the real death toll is many multiples of this figure.
The Zionist regime’s horrific crime, comparable to the brutality of the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry, has taken place with the active collaboration of the imperialist powers from the beginning. Led by the US and Germany, they have supplied huge quantities of weaponry to Israel. This military hardware has been used to massacre men, women, and children indiscriminately, and to enforce the criminal naval blockade of Gaza that has been imposed continuously since 2007.
US President Donald Trump’s so-called “peace plan” would continue the imperialist powers’ complicity in the genocide by establishing a colonial-style administration in Gaza. Trump stated Friday that Hamas has until Sunday to accept the total abrogation of the Palestinians’ rights or “all hell” will break loose.
That is to say, Trump is preparing to give the war criminal Netanyahu the green light to escalate the genocide, all in the name of “peace.” Trump and leading consultants of US imperialism have bluntly insisted on the need to clear Gaza of its inhabitants so it can function as a key part of an economic corridor—dubbed the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor—dominated by the US and its allies throughout the Middle East. The securing of this trade route, and an accommodation between Israel and the despotic Arab regimes, none of which have done anything to halt the genocide, would enable American imperialism to achieve its goal of unchallenged regional hegemony by sidelining China, Russia, and Iran.
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As a new re-division of the world intensifies, like those that produced the two world wars in the last century, the financial oligarchs and their spokesmen in government will resort to anything to secure access to raw materials, markets, labor for exploitation, and geostrategic influence—including risking the very survival of humanity in a third world war fought with nuclear weapons.
The global eruption of outrage to the blocking of the Sumud flotilla, especially the strikes by workers in Italy and Greece, points to the social force capable of putting a stop to this madness: the international working class. But the working class must first establish its political independence from all of the social democratic, Stalinist, and trade union bureaucracies that have tied it to the bankrupt strategy of protest politics for the past two years. The imperialist powers will not be persuaded to change course by moral appeals. As German Chancellor Friedrich Merz admitted in June, “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us.”
*****
The fight to stop the genocide necessarily requires a movement committed to ousting the financial oligarchy from power and the overturn of capitalism, the root cause of imperialist barbarism that finds its most appalling expression in Gaza. This means setting out to establish workers’ power to carry through the socialist transformation of society.
8. Amid deepening drone war with Ukraine, Kremlin imposes severe internet and cellphone shutdowns
Amid an intensifying cyber and drone war with NATO-backed Ukraine, the Kremlin has significantly expanded its efforts to restrict free access to the internet and curtail whatever democratic rights in Russia nominally remain.
Rolling internet and cell network shutdowns are now a feature of everyday life across the country. ATMs, card payments and taxi and ride-sharing apps are frequently not working. Pharmacies, especially in provincial areas, have reported major difficulties obtaining medication. Viktoria Presnyakova, head of the Association of Independent Pharmacies, explained to the Associated Press that prescriptions had to be logged in special software, which is impossible when there is no internet connection for weeks. Cell phone services are also disabled for days or weeks on end, especially but not only in regions bordering Ukraine, such as Belgorod, which are routinely targeted by drone attacks.
Because of the severe disruptions to social and economic life, the Nezavisimaya Gazeta recently called for “a special backup internet access mechanism—a system that allows key digital services to continue operating when communications are shut down.” Already, the Kremlin has created a system where specific websites on a “white list” are able to function, while the rest of the internet is shut down. This “white list,” according to the Nezavisimaya Gazeta, includes “domestic social networks, large mail and information portals, Yandex ecosystem services, marketplaces (Ozon, Wildberries, Avito), and video hosting services, as well as government resources such as the Gosuslugi portal, government websites, and the president’s website. Users can still communicate, receive news, make purchases, and use basic financial services, but only within the approved list. All other resources, including foreign platforms and messengers, will be unavailable.”
The Kremlin-backed Izvestiia reported that the government is now planning to set up an agency to coordinate internet shutdowns.
The shutdowns are connected to the intensification of drone warfare with Ukraine and, in part, aimed at preempting NATO and Ukraine from using telecommunications to launch attacks. The first major internet shutdowns were reported in the capital Moscow in May during the celebrations of the Soviet victory over the Nazis in World War II. A significant turning point was the Ukraine-NATO “Operation Spiderweb” in early June, when Ukrainian drones launched from trucks attacked military airfields deep inside Russian territory. Sarkis Darbinyan, founder of Russian internet freedom group Roskomsvoboda, told the Associated Press, “They got really scared that drones now may appear, like a jack-in-the-box, in any Russian regions.”
This is precisely what is now occurring. Although there is almost no coverage of it in the pro-NATO Western media, Ukraine now launches daily attacks on Russian territory with drones, targeting both civilian and military infrastructure. The Kremlin reports that it intercepts dozens of drones every night, including in regions far from the front lines. Because of mass drone attacks, airports across the country routinely have to cancel flights. The largest airports in St. Petersburg and Moscow have experienced several major shutdowns since July.
But the Kremlin is also clearly using the escalation of the cyber and drone war with Russia to significantly step up its efforts to prevent Russian workers from accessing news and linking up with their class brothers and sisters internationally. Plans for a closed Russian internet have been in the making for many years, predating the war, and the Kremlin has long imposed some of the most far-reaching censorship laws and measures to curtail the ability of users to hide their IPs through the use of Virtual Private Networks.
Since the beginning of the war, most foreign-based social media apps and platforms, including Meta-owned platforms and Twitter (X), have been banned. WhatsApp, which is very widely used by Russian users, particularly to stay connected with friends and family abroad, still functions but its voice call and message functions have been severely restricted. On September 1, a series of laws came into effect that further complicate and criminalize the use of Virtual Private Networks.
These censorship laws are an intrinsic component of a broader crackdown on democratic rights. On September 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on the withdrawal of Russia from the European Convention of Human Rights.
*****
The escalating attack on democratic rights comes as NATO, and especially the European imperialist powers, relentlessly ratchet up pressure on Russia. Under these conditions, there are growing calls within the oligarchy for the Kremlin to respond more aggressively on a military level while intensifying its efforts to subordinate all of society to the war effort.
Sergei Karaganov, an influential foreign policy pundit, recently stated at a round table hosted by the Kremlin-aligned think tank Russia in Global Affairs,
Our state and military-political strategy needs to dramatically increase the role of nuclear deterrence. We have relaxed, and so has the rest of the world; the world has stopped fearing war. And we have allowed something completely unimaginable to happen—a sense of impunity has taken hold in the world, especially in the West. Therefore, we need to sharply increase our emphasis on nuclear deterrence, begin to move up the escalation ladder, starting with strikes using conventional weapons, and then, if there is a response, even nuclear weapons, against our opponents in Europe.
*****
he Kremlin’s greatest concern is the development of a unified movement of the Russian and the Ukrainian working class against both imperialism and the rule of the capitalist oligarchy. For workers, the alternative posed is, on the one hand, a future determined by the interests of the oligarchy and imperialism which means unending wars and the threat of nuclear annihilation—or, on the other hand, a return to the path of the 1917 October Revolution, of international class struggle and socialist revolution.
9. Ultra-billionaire Jeff Bezos declares economic bubbles are “good”
Referring to the massive run-up in share values for technology companies, Bezos declared, “This is a kind of industrial bubble.”
In admitting that there is a bubble in technology stocks, Bezos is undeniably right. Among serious financial analysts, every warning sign is flashing red. Technology companies with negligible earnings are planning to make investments based on assumptions that simply cannot, even in the most optimistic scenarios, come to pass. A recent article in the Wall Street Journal noted that leading technology companies have pledged more money to building AI data centers and associated technologies than the cost of building the US interstate highway system over four decades.
*****
But the massive overvaluation of the asset values of technology companies like his, Bezos said, is a good thing. Industrial bubbles “could even be good, because when the dust settles and you see who the winners are, society benefits from those inventions ... and that’s what’s going to happen here.”
*****
Bezos defends the current overvaluation of financial assets on the grounds that the underlying economic development of generative AI will benefit society. No doubt, in an economic system organized to benefit society, known as socialism, generative AI would have a massive positive impact. But under capitalism, the impact of the vast labor-saving power of generative AI is primarily to replace entire classes of labor, driving up unemployment, driving down wages and increasing economic inequality.
Bezos knows, however, that the bubble is not confined to AI. The global cryptocurrency market has hit a valuation of $4 trillion, and Bitcoin is up $47 billion. Unlike generative AI, cryptocurrency has never shown itself to have any serious use outside of crime and money laundering.
What will be the response of governments when not only the AI bubble but also the cryptocurrency bubble suffers an inevitable meltdown? The Trump government will immediately spring into action, providing vast and unprecedented new sums for the bailout of Trump’s fellow oligarchs.
This raises the question of how this bailout will be paid for. The US federal debt has reached $37 trillion, and the debt-to-GDP ratio is at the highest level in US history. The price of gold, a proxy for market uncertainty about the solvency of the dollar, has hit $3,900, up 25 percent in just six months.
In reality, the knowledge on the part of the financial oligarchs that their wealth is propped up by an unsustainable financial bubble is behind the systematic efforts of the Trump administration to slash social spending, lay off hundreds of thousands of federal workers and destroy the key entitlement programs—Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. They are fully aware that this money will be needed when the bubble inevitably bursts to bail out their bad debts.
The oligarchs are likewise fully aware that there will be mass opposition to another major upward redistribution of wealth. This, ultimately, is what is behind their support for the effort of Trump to establish a presidential dictatorship.
10. Explosion at Chevron’s El Segundo refinery rocks Los Angeles
Late Thursday night, a massive explosion and subsequent fire tore through Chevron’s sprawling El Segundo oil refinery, a century-old complex that looms over Los Angeles’ South Bay region.
The blast erupted around 9:30 p.m. in the refinery’s Isomax 7 unit, a key system that converts mid-distillates into jet fuel, sending a shock wave through surrounding neighborhoods. Residents reported windows rattling and walls shaking; many initially believed they were experiencing an earthquake or some other seismic event.
Flames and thick black smoke were visible for miles, illuminating the night sky a hazy orange and prompting widespread alarm. But officials and Chevron rushed to reassure the public. They declared the incident “isolated,” asserted that “all personnel were accounted for,” and insisted there was “no immediate public safety threat.”
Despite elevated levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) detected overnight, Chevron maintained that its fence-line monitoring systems did not record any breaches of legal emission thresholds. The shelter in place order was lifted early Friday.
The fact that no workers were reported injured is almost certainly a matter of sheer luck. But the absence of casualties says nothing about the long-term consequences. Elevated VOC levels, even if below “legal” thresholds, are linked to cancer, respiratory disease, and other chronic health problems.
The massive facility is economically and strategically critical. It supplies 20 percent of Southern California’s gasoline and 40 percent of its jet fuel.
*****
More will emerge about the circumstances behind the disaster, but the fact that the conditions existed where such a disaster could take place testifies to the indifference of corporate American to elementary safety measures which are seen as a drain on profit. Indeed, the same facility suffered an earlier fire in 2022.
It is the latest in a series of massive industrial accidents which are a virtually daily occurrence in America.
They include:
- The August 27 death of three workers at a Texas sewage plant due to toxic chemical exposure;
- An explosion on August 22 of an oil and lubricant factory in Roseland, Louisiana;
- On August 21, six workers died of gas exposure at a Colorado dairy farm;
- On August 18, near Baltimore, a coal barge caught fire near the Francis Scott Key Bridge, which had collapsed last year after a ship collision
- The August 11 explosion of the Clairton Coke Works in the Pittsburgh area, killing two steelworkers and injuring 10;
- Three workers died on July 30 in an explosion at a Nebraska biofuel plant;
- The July 1 explosion in a fireworks factory in Esparto, California which killed seven.
The list goes on....
*****
These are not accidents in any meaningful sense. They are social crimes, predictable outcomes of a deregulated, profit-driven system that treats human lives as expendable. Agencies like Cal/OSHA, chronically underfunded and politically neutered, serve more as public relations shields than enforcers of safety. Companies routinely negotiate down fines, conceal incident reports, and resume production with little more than a slap on the wrist through regulatory capture or by being enmeshed into the government.
*****
The Chevron blaze comes amid a sweeping restructuring of California’s energy landscape. Major refineries are closing, including Phillips 66’s Wilmington and Carson facilities and Valero’s Bay Area plant, eliminating thousands of stable jobs and hollowing out entire working-class communities. Together, these closures will erase nearly one-fifth of the state’s refining capacity.
The official narrative presents this as a transition toward a “green economy.” But in reality, these closures are dictated not by concern for the planet but by shifting profit calculations. Companies shutter older facilities when they are no longer sufficiently lucrative, even if doing so leaves behind environmental devastation, economic blight, and mass unemployment.
*****
Newsom’s supposed “climate leadership” has been exposed as a fraud. Under pressure from oil companies and amid rising fuel costs, he recently authorized up to 2,000 new oil wells annually through 2036, a decision that overturns years of environmental litigation and guarantees decades more of fossil fuel extraction. Just this week, he also approved the sale of gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol before safety reviews were completed, a gift to agribusiness and refiners disguised as consumer “relief.”
Newsom’s accomplices are the trade union bureaucracy, which has failed to challenge the systemic dangers at Chevron. In 2022, the United Steelworkers isolated a strike of Chevron workers in Richmond, California from their El Segundo brothers and sisters and from refinery workers across the country. The USW boasted that its national refinery agreement that year did not contribute to inflation—that is, contained substandard wage increases.
11. Movie Review: One Battle After Another: Paul Thomas Anderson’s drama of rebellion and repression
In the most chilling and moving scenes, Anderson and his colleagues represent with great accuracy the drive to police-state rule currently under way. The brutality and fascistic character of the anti-immigrant hysteria and ICE raids in particular receives convincing expression in the film.
*****
Whatever the weaknesses and confused or poorly developed elements in One Battle After Another, Anderson deserves full credit, first of all, for making an appalled and outspoken film. The work was loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel, Vineland.
*****
Again, the sequences of heavily armed military or paramilitary thugs breaking into houses and shops, abducting individuals, arresting, interrogating and abusing them with impunity—all of this rings true. This is not science fiction or “dystopia.” It is occurring in the US at present, in Chicago, Los Angeles and dozens of other locations, organized by the fascistic Trump administration and unopposed by the Democratic Party.
The performance of James Raterman as Danvers, one of the interrogators, strikes one as particularly authentic, and so it should. Raterman had decades of experience as a Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent, a Special Agent for the Secret Service and an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation Special Agent.
The aim of the questioning in each case is to intimidate and terrorize those unfortunate enough to fall into the clutches of this gang of “state-backed goons” (as one reviewer accurately describes them).
*****
The critical response to the film has generally been largely friendly, even enthusiastic, with various voices expressing pleasure that finally someone has said what is....
*****
The palpable sense of relief is telling. Trump and his fascist gang are openly attempting a military-police coup and no “prominent Democrats,” as we wrote recently, “have called for the mobilization of opposition to Trump’s efforts ... In fact, they enable Trump’s dictatorship.” The principal media outlets are equally silent or openly accommodating. As was the case in the Jimmy Kimmel affair, it has taken something outside the official political sphere, in this case a fiction film, to provide an outlet for a portion of the outrage against the fascists in the White House, Homeland Security and the Pentagon to find expression.
One Battle After Another is being promoted as a masterpiece in various quarters, including the Times. It is not that, despite its numerous virtues.
*****
One Battle After Another is limited in its social and historical outlook, in so far as it presents one. Why do the authorities all of a sudden launch a time-consuming and expensive offensive against this small group of radicals? Simply because of Col. Lockjaw’s private agenda? That seems thin. Why the anti-immigrant mania and cruelty? Because a small group of white supremacists dominate America? Again, inadequate to say the least. The film doesn’t embrace identity politics and race-as-the-answer-to-all-questions, but it rubs up against such notions, in part because, evasively, the filmmakers don’t have the energy or understanding to locate the roots of the current circumstances firmly in the intense crisis of American capitalism.
*****
Lazily, the film bends toward its conclusion in the direction, a recurring Anderson concern, of a family drama, the reunion of father and daughter, the passing of the “protest” torch from one generation to another…
In any event, One Battle After Another, which has achieved initial success at the box office (earning $68 million worldwide so far, “exceeding industry expectations”) has sufficient sting to have outraged right-wing critics....
*****
Thomas Pynchon’s Vineland, which finds resonance and “echoes” in the film, really requires separate treatment. (Anderson previously based his 2014 film, Inherent Vice, more directly on the Pynchon novel of the same title.) The book has some of the same general parameters as the film, the fate of a group of ex-radicals, not terrorists but a left-wing film collective, stuck unhappily in 1984 under Ronald Reagan.
Pynchon—best known for V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Gravity’s Rainbow—is one of the most “brilliant” writers in America, a characterization, complete with inverted commas, intended as a double-edged sword....
12. Netherlands set for October snap election amid crisis of bourgeois rule
As the Dutch ruling class prepares for snap elections on October 29, 2025, the working class confronts a political system lurching further to the right under the combined pressures of militarism, austerity and authoritarian rule. From the fascistic far right to the discredited labour parties and pseudoleft formations, official parties across the board have drafted election programs that serve the ruling political and financial elite, guaranteeing that any coalition emerging from the elections will intensify war abroad while tightening repression at home.
Amid mass anti-genocide protests in The Hague, the collapse of the Dutch government in June—after Geert Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) withdrew from the four-party coalition—was a calculated maneuver by the ruling elite to gain time to recalibrate its methods of authoritarian rule and advance its imperialist interests. This mirrors a broader international and European trend in which the bourgeoisie is deepening militarism and autocracy, fusing nationalist scapegoating of immigrants and refugees with savage austerity.
The ruling caretaker government, led by unelected former spy Dick Schoof, has reaffirmed Netherlands’ €19 billion NATO contribution, escalating the war against Russia in Ukraine and continuing tacit support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza. These actions expose the ruling class’s central priorities: war abroad and the intensification of class war at home.
*****
The ruling class’s prioritization of militarism and imperialist war has provoked widespread opposition in the Netherlands, reflecting a broader international trend. In May and June, over 150,000 people marched in The Hague’s “Red Line” demonstrations; a third protest is scheduled for Amsterdam on October 5, linking solidarity with Gaza to demands for social justice at home.
Students occupied campuses nationwide, such as in Utrecht, Nijmegen and Amsterdam, denouncing the militarization of education and calling for an end to military subsidies. Nationwide railway strikes and a university staff strike in June—though limited and fragmented by the union leadership—illustrated the growing mobilization of Dutch and immigrant workers and youth. As the World Socialist Web Site has emphasized, these struggles cannot be reduced to moral appeals or pressure politics; they must be extended to challenge the capitalist system itself.
*****
The Dutch establishment’s promotion of a “new center‑left” merger must be understood as part of a broader pattern across European capitals: electoral pacts that appear to offer a progressive alternative but ultimately divert social opposition back into stabilizing a rotten and disintegrating political establishment. Everywhere in Europe, formations claiming to represent a “new progressive” or “left alternative” to the far right have proved instrumental to give a breather to the capitalist order in decay.
These political spin-offs fundamentally prevent the working class from breaking free of the capitalist framework, suppress strikes and protests and legitimize war, genocide and austerity under a “progressive” veneer.
*****
The summer months of July and August saw further radicalization of youth and the working class, reflecting broader European developments since, especially in France and Italy. Palestine solidarity protests, continuing into sit-ins and rallies across Utrecht, Amsterdam and Groningen, linked Dutch complicity in genocide to domestic austerity and militarization. The KLM staff at Schiphol went on repeated strikes that continued to be isolated by the trade union apparatus. The “Red Line” marches in The Hague were only the beginning of a broader mass mobilization. Without a revolutionary leadership, however, such movements risk being derailed by outfits such as GroenLinks–PvdA, which claims to “support” them while upholding US-NATO wars, EU diktats and repression.
The deployment of half the Dutch police at the July NATO summit in The Hague was particularly revealing. Alongside F-35 jets, drones and roadblocks, the caretaker government staged the largest security operation in Dutch history—not to deter foreign threats but to intimidate the working class.
Dutch hospitals report they will face staff shortages of 60,000 by 2030; student debt has doubled in a decade; 390,000 households cannot afford rent; 60 percent struggle to pay bills; food bank usage has risen by over 30 percent since 2022. Yet, defense spending soars and corporate subsidies remain untouched. This is not merely a budgetary choice—It reflects a ruling class preparing for broader war and social confrontation.
For the Dutch working class, the chief danger in this month’s elections lies in being disarmed by the illusion of voting for a “lesser evil.” The media hypes the Red-Green bloc as the “only hope” against Wilders. History shows that such alliances do not defeat the far right but rather play a pivotal role in emboldening it. Germany’s SPD-Green coalition’s war drive fed the far-right AfD’s rise. A GroenLinks–PvdA led government in the Netherlands similarly will not halt Wilders but prepare his return on a stronger, more reactionary basis.
Wilders’ PVV is leading in the polls, though its support is lower than in the last elections. Its manifesto, “Dit is jouw land” (“This is your land”), spells out a fascistic program, galvanizing lumpen elements into its own version of stormtroopers. The recent neo-fascist riot against immigration in The Hague, parading Dutch colonial VOC flags and those of the notorious fascist NSB party, underscores this trajectory. Passages in the PVV manifesto fuse hardline anti-immigration rhetoric with claims to defend “Dutch identity,” while simultaneously demanding a massive expansion of the state apparatus and a surge in defense spending.
*****
The socialist, internationalist perspective is clear: Redirect billions from war to social needs; expropriate banks and corporations under workers’ control; dismantle NATO; unite workers across Europe to build a United Socialist States of Europe. Only this perspective can enable the working class to confront austerity, resist authoritarianism and end imperialist war and genocide. The GroenLinks–PvdA ploy is part of the problem, not the solution. Dutch workers must see through false promises of the media-baptized nominal left, draw crucial historical lessons and build a politically independent revolutionary vanguard.
The choice is crystal clear: Either the working class advances its interests to seize power, or the ruling elite—through Wilders, or Timmermans and the like—will drag society deeper into the quagmire of war, repression and social misery.
13. Trump uses shutdown to step up anti-immigrant pogrom
Trump and the Republicans are using the government shutdown to escalate their fascist anti-immigrant campaign, the spearhead of dictatorship and social counterrevolution against the entire working class.
They are seizing on the Democratic leadership’s claim to be defending healthcare benefits to accuse them of using “Americans’ taxpayer money” to fund free healthcare for “illegal aliens.” Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are insisting this is a lie, while refusing to defend immigrants, documented and undocumented, who are the victims of mass, illegal raids and detentions, and the hundreds of thousands of immigrants who are being summarily deported.
The Democrats are equally silent on increasingly violent and lawless attacks by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Gestapo on peaceful protesters in New York, Chicago and elsewhere across the US. This is despite mass popular opposition to the pogrom against immigrants.
*****
The assault on immigrants and their defenders is an essential part of the establishment of a presidential dictatorship. Trump has dispatched National Guard troops to Los Angeles, Washington D.C. and now Portland, Oregon and Memphis, Tennessee, and promised to deploy troops to Chicago and other major cities. The LA deployment included active duty Marines.
At this week’s unprecedented gathering of some 800 generals and admirals outside of Washington, Trump ordered the military to engage in war against US cities and the “enemy within,” openly declaring war against the working class.
At the same time, Trump, acting on behalf of the corporate oligarchy, is using the shutdown to impose mass permanent layoffs of federal workers and close or gut federal agencies that oversee social benefits or regulations on corporations regarding workers’ health and safety and the environment. He is working with Office of Management and Budget (OMB) head Russell Vought, the co-author of the Project 2025 blueprint for counterrevolution, to carry out a vast restructuring of the state, which can be imposed only by dictatorial means.
The attack on immigrant workers is aimed at dividing and disorienting the working class and facilitating dictatorship and the destruction of all the social gains won by the working class over the past century, including Social Security and Medicare.
*****
Meanwhile, Trump is posting on social media racist AI-generated videos blaring mariachi music and showing Jeffries wearing a sombrero and a cartoon mustache. Next to him is a digitally altered Schumer saying, “we need new voters, and if we give all these illegal aliens free healthcare, we might be able to get them on our side so they can vote for us.”
This is a version of the fascist and antisemitic Great Replacement Theory, which claims that Jews are conspiring to replace white Christian Americans with non-white immigrants.
The working class must act independently of the Democrats and union bureaucracies, which are complicit in this attack, to defend immigrant workers and the democratic rights of the population as a whole. It must forge the fighting unity of workers in the struggle to bring down the Trump government.
14. 41 people crushed to death at Tamil Nadu political rally
The Karur rally was part of the actor’s bid to become Tamil Nadu’s Chief Minister when state assembly elections are held next April.
The 51-year-old Vijay, often called “Thalapathy” (Commander) by his fans, is one of the most popular actors in Tamil-language cinema. Over nearly three decades, he has acted in more than 65 films, usually portraying a heroic figure who defends the helpless poor and defeats corrupt elites. His movies consistently rank among the highest grossing in South India.
The site chosen for the September 27 rally, Velusamypuram, is a densely built-up market area on the Karur–Erode road. With barely 1,000 square feet of usable space, it was wholly inadequate for the more than 25,000 people who converged on it for Vijay’s September 27 rally.
Anxious to see their idol, people started congregating as of 10 am, but Vijay and his convoy only arrived in the evening, more than seven hours late. When the film-star-turned-politician ascended on his tour bus to address the crowd, it was well past 7.00 pm.
By then, it was already apparent that a medical emergency was unfolding.
*****
Anxious to see their idol, people started congregating as of 10 am, but Vijay and his convoy only arrived in the evening, more than seven hours late. When the film-star-turned-politician ascended on his tour bus to address the crowd, it was well past 7.00 pm.
By then, it was already apparent that a medical emergency was unfolding.
*****
There are multiple, conflicting narratives about what precisely triggered the acute stage of the crowd-crush, but there is no question that this was a disaster that could have been foretold and prevented
*****
Tamil Nadu’s DMK government has accused the rally organisers of flagrant violations of safety guidelines. Police have charged several senior TVK leaders, including Vijay’s close aide N. Anand and the party’s joint general secretary, Nirmal Sekar, with culpable homicide not amounting to murder, along with violations of public safety laws. On September 30, similar charges were laid against Karur West District TVK secretary Mathiyazhagan.
The TVK, meanwhile, has tried to shift blame onto the DMK. Initially, they complained that there were not enough police personnel to control the crowd. Party supporters have subsequently accused a local DMK politician, Senthil Balaji, whom Vijay has attacked for corruption, of triggering the crowd crush by instructing police to attack the crowd when it sang along with Vijay to a song satirizing Balaji’s corruption.
Completely ignored in these claims are the limited size of the venue, the failure to provide relief to people forced to wait hours under trying conditions for Vijay’s arrival, and the decision to continue the rally amid the unfolding tragedy.
*****
After a two-day culpable silence, Vijay issued a nearly five-minute-long video, expressing his condolences and appealing to the DMK Chief Minister, M.K. Stalin, to arrest him directly, and not hold his party’s office bearers responsible. In this video he asks, “Why did this happen only in Karur?” referring to his previous mass gatherings and suggesting that the September 27 tragedy must have been the outcome of a DMK conspiracy.
ccording to the police, the TVK had originally sought permission for a smaller venue, claiming only 10,000 attendees were expected. It is common practice across the subcontinent for capitalist politicians to organize mass rallies in limited spaces, so as to give the impression of overflow crowds and to make supporters wait hours until their leaders’ arrival amid boisterous applause to highlight the strength and devotion of their popular following.
At Karur and in previous events, Vijay succeeded in attracting large crowds. While his superstardom undoubtedly played a role, the flocking of large numbers of youth, including unemployed graduates, to his rallies reflects Tamil Nadu’s deep social crisis—joblessness, soaring prices, and precarious contract labor.
*****
Tamil Nadu’s unemployed youth and contract workers, many from indebted agrarian families, have time and again seen their hopes and aspirations dashed by the traditional ruling parties, whose names are increasingly popularly viewed as synonymous with corruption.
If many of them have turned to the film-star cum demagogue Vijay, it is out of desperation, hoping his “heroism” on screen fighting for the poor against corrupt elites can be transformed into real life.
15. Australia Post boss demands further restructuring to boost profits
Announcing the company’s annual financial results in late August, Australia Post (AP) CEO Paul Graham made clear that ongoing restructuring measures will be expanded and deepened, as the state-owned postal service is rapidly transformed into a parcel delivery business.
Despite record-high revenue of $9.45 billion, AP made only a “modest” pre-tax profit of $18.8 million. Graham attributed this primarily to a supposed $230.4 million loss by the letters side of the business, which recorded an 11.7 percent decline in volume.
He said: “We’ve passed the tipping point… we are primarily a parcels business that also provides a loss-making letters service.” To avoid “becoming a drain on the taxpayer,” AP will need to “simplify and transform” its operation.
Graham’s comments should be a warning to all AP workers: Last year’s halving of letter delivery frequency to every second day was only the beginning. AP management, with the backing of the federal Labor government and the Communication Workers Union (CWU) bureaucracy, is working towards eliminating letters entirely and transforming the company into a profit-focused parcel delivery business.
This will have enormous consequences for postal workers. The daily delivery of letters to every address in the country has for decades been carried out largely by full-time workers, with relatively stable and secure jobs.
In the parcel delivery business, however, AP will increasingly be competing with “gig-economy” operations like Amazon Flex and Uber. At recent meetings, under the banner of “Our AP Way,” management told workers the company is at “war” with its competitors.
For workers, such a “war” means a race to the bottom on wages and conditions with some of the most notorious exploiters of labor in the advanced capitalist world.
*****
Similar processes of “Amazonification,” the gutting of jobs, wages and conditions, and preparations for privatisation are already far advanced in postal services around the world.
Pointing to these global “challenges,” Graham noted, “The United States, Canada, France, Spain and the United Kingdom are recent examples of postal operators experiencing significant losses, change of ownership, or receiving billion-dollar government-funded bailouts to survive. This is not a path we want to take.”
The alternative path Graham is proposing is to shortcut the process, skip over the “significant losses” and proceed directly to implementing the same sweeping restructuring measures that are being carried out internationally. The introduction of the New Delivery Model (NDM) and alternate-day delivery, along with other cost-slashing measures, such as the closure of post offices, are just the first steps along this path.
*****
In order to fight the attack on jobs, wages and conditions at AP, workers first need to understand that management’s restructuring plans are being executed with the complete support of the union bureaucracy.
Speaking to delegates in May, Communications Workers Union (CWU) Central Branch secretary Shane Murphy said: “While other postal services around the world are slashing and burning through their service offerings, privatising their operations and hacking away at their workforce and their pay packets—we’ve achieved the complete opposite.”
In fact, the CWU bureaucracy collaborated with management and the federal Labor government to deliver the biggest “slashing and burning” of AP’s “service offering” in its history—the ending of everyday delivery. The sole purpose of this is to enable the ongoing commercial viability of AP as a parcel business—a necessary prerequisite for privatization.
*****
Internationally, postal workers trying to fight attacks on their jobs, wages and conditions are coming into conflict with union bureaucracies that are trying to suppress their struggle and enforce management and government restructuring plans.
On September 25, 55,000 Canadian postal workers walked off the job in opposition to the government’s “Transformation Plan” to eliminate postal delivery as a public service and destroy tens of thousands of jobs. This includes plans to privatise the most profitable sections of Canada Post and sell it off to the highest bidder.
The ongoing strike wasn’t called by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), but started when workers spontaneously walked off the job after hearing of the government’s plans to destroy the postal service. The CUPW bureaucracy is now working overtime to take control of the strike, prevent it spreading to other sections of workers and engineer a return-to-work on the government’s terms.
The developments at Canada Post, as well as the CWU’s complicity in the ADM and the NDM, highlight that the CUPW, like the CWU in Australia, and all other unions, does not represent the interests of workers, but those of big business and the so-called “national” economy.
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The struggle for postal workers’ jobs, wages and conditions must be connected with a fight against privatisation. The insistence that essential public services, including the post, must be operated as profit-making enterprises should be rejected entirely.
16. Canada Post worker calls for broadening strike to other sections of the working class
A mail delivery worker writes to the World Socialist Web Site after a week of being on a picket line:
“The future of all Canadian public services is at risk, and the issues we are fighting for affect all workers! The right to strike, workers control over new technologies, and the gigification of jobs affects everyone. We must become the spearhead of a broader movement of the working class in defense of the right to strike, high quality public services, and good jobs. A week into our strike, we must urgently appeal to other sections of workers to broaden our movement against a government of capitalist austerity and imperialist war.”
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"The ruling class has worked out its ruthless class war agenda, and we must advance our strategy for the working class. The current picket lines started from below, but more is required than spontaneous militancy. We pushed the CUPW leadership on the back-foot to force a strike, but they along with the allies atop the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) have now regrouped and pursue the same bankrupt policy of keeping us isolated from all other workers on the picket lines, while begging for talks with the pro-corporate government."
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"Postal workers who agree that a successful struggle can only be accomplished through the independent intervention of rank-and-file workers into this political fight should join and help build the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC). Linking up with other workers throughout Canada and internationally is of decisive importance in the struggle to improve working conditions, which necessarily entails a fight against capitalist austerity, dictatorship and war."
17. British government exploits Manchester synagogue killings to attack anti-genocide protesters
Within hours of the killing of two Jewish worshippers at a synagogue in Manchester on Thursday, the Labour government and police—backed by a frothing right-wing media—leapt on the tragedy to intensify their crackdown on protests against the Gaza genocide, and the campaign to brand anti-Zionism as “left antisemitism”.
On Thursday morning, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, a man drove into worshippers outside the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue. He then got out of his vehicle and began stabbing people, before trying to enter the synagogue. The attacker was later named as Jihad Al-Shamie, a 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent.
Armed police officers arrived within seven minutes and shot Al-Shamie dead. It emerged the following day that police gunfire also killed one of the two victims, Adrian Daulby, aged 53, who was shot as he helped to secure the synagogue doors. Another man was seriously injured by police fire and is in hospital alongside two others with wounds from Al-Shamie’s car and knife attack.
Police feared Al-Shamie was wearing an explosive device, but it was deemed not to be “viable” after investigation. Three people have been arrested “on suspicion of commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism”.
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While reams of paper have been spent denouncing anti-genocide protests and demanding their suppression, little scrutiny has been given to Al-Shamie and the government’s claim that he was not previously known to counter-terrorism police.
Manchester was the scene of a terrorist atrocity in 2017, when Salman Abedi, helped by his brother Hashem, carried out a suicide bombing at Manchester Arena, killing 22 people and injuring over 1,000.
While it was admitted he was known to the intelligence agencies prior to the attack, it only subsequently emerged that Salman, his father Ramadan and brothers Ismail and Hashem were allowed to operate in the war zone of Libya and travel freely between there and the UK for years before the attack.
They were assets of British imperialism: far-right Islamists deployed to aid imperialist foreign policy objectives in Libya and throughout the Middle East—including the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. In 2014, Britain’s Royal Navy warship HMS Enterprise even evacuated the Abedi brothers from Libya, bringing them back to Britain.
18. Scale of Australian military exports to Israel exposed
A detailed investigative report, published this week by Declassified Australia in partnership with the Ditch, has lifted the lid on extensive and ongoing military exports from Australia to Israel.
The report builds upon previous exposures by both outlets. But it is far and away the most extensive documentation of the material component of Australia’s involvement in Israel’s mass slaughter of the Palestinians in Gaza.
In addition to exposing the country’s Labor government and its leaders as a pack of liars, for their denial of such support, the material contained in the report strengthens the case that they are guilty of materially aiding war crimes, itself a violation of international law.
The report shows that such exports have continued, following Declassified’s first exposure in July and amid a growing awareness of Australia’s direct role in aiding the Zionist war machine.
As per the report, “the most recent shipment of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel left Sydney two weeks ago destined to Tel Aviv, exported in the cargo bay of a scheduled passenger flight from Sydney International Airport.”
That shipment was part of a trade that has occurred throughout the two years of the genocide. Confidential shipping records, which were the basis of the report, listed “a total of 68 shipments of F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft parts flown from Australia directly to Israel between October 2023 and September 2025.”
Significantly, “The shipping records show that the number of Joint Strike Fighter parts shipments made directly to Israel from Australia spiked immediately after the commencement of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza on the evening of 7 October 2023, with 10 separate shipments being made from Australia to Israel in the one month of November 2023 alone.”
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Notwithstanding Labor’s recent 'recognition” of the state of Palestine and calls for a ceasefire, the shipment of military goods to Israel ensures that its capacity to slaughter the Palestinians proceeds unchecked. In other words, the exports give the lie to Labor’s rhetoric, exposing it as an exercise in cynical damage control.
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Labor has, over the past two years, advanced a series of often mutually contradictory excuses for the ongoing trade with Israel, while shrouding it in secrecy.
Its leading representatives have repeatedly declared that Australia “does not export weapons” to Israel. But it has been fairly evident that by “weapons,” they are referring to something in the order of fully-assembled guns, missiles, etc. That is a cynical dodge, and given the complex nature of modern weapons systems, often involving parts from around the world, it is an absurdity.
That line of argument is also contradicted by the Australian defense department’s own classification system, under which parts and components, for instance, for F-35 fighter jets, are deemed military exports requiring approval.
In late July, following the release of the first Declassified report, Foreign Minister Penny Wong was asked in parliament about the exports. In an angry response dripping with contempt, Wong declared that such exports were only of “non-lethal” parts. But obviously, parts which aid in the functioning of a fighter jet, enabling it to drop bombs on civilians, are “lethal.”
Declassified recalled another conflicting response by a senior defence department bureaucrat last year, in answer to similar questioning. He claimed that many exports were not actually exports, but were being transported to Israel for maintenance or repair there before being returned to Australia.
This implausible explanation was dealt a blow by the latest Declassified report. In addition to the parts being dispatched directly to the main F-35 base of the Israeli military, their character makes it unlikely that they are being sent for repair.
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The secrecy of the exports is perhaps the greatest argument demonstrating their sinister character. Declassified notes that the latest parts, shipped last month, were transported through the cargo of a commercial passenger plane.
That is a highly unusual arrangement, clearly intended to shield the shipments from public scrutiny. It is also a violation of the rights of passengers, who are unwittingly boarding a craft containing military supplies, which could make the plane a target.
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The Declassified report is also a damning indictment of the official Australian media, from two standpoints. What should have been front-page news has instead been subject to a total press blackout.
And the question inevitably arises, why did it fall to Declassified, a small, independent outlet, to come upon and publish this information? The answer is that the major media outlets are themselves complicit in the genocide, devoting their resources, not to exposing Australia’s role in the worst war crimes of the century, but to attacking those who protest them.
19. Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia
Australia:
Napean Power electricians in New South Wales locked out in pay dispute
Western Australian park rangers strike for higher pay
Queensland Transport and Main Roads workers strike for shorter week
Cleanaway truck drivers in Townsville strike over low pay offer
Industrial action by South Australian firefighters enters fifth week
Bucher Municipal workers in Victoria strike for improved work agreement
Central Goldfields Shire Council workers begin industrial action for higher pay
Re.Group waste recycling workers on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast strike
Fonterra dairy factory maintenance workers in Tasmania strike
Bangladesh:
Police arrest garment workers protesting factory closures
India:
Kadamba Transport Corporation workers strike in Goa
Delhi Municipal Corporation workers strike for permanent jobs
Tamil Nadu railway workers strike over staff shortages
Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research workers protest
Chhattisgarh National Health Mission workers on indefinite strike
Pakistan:
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa power utility workers strike against staff shortage and privatization
Sindh province government employees still protesting over pension cuts
Philippines:
Antique province hospital contract nurses strike
South Korea:
Airport workers hold nationwide strike
Bank workers walk out for shorter work week
Sri Lanka:
Public sector university academics strike
20. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
