Over
the three days since the United States and Israel launched their
illegal and unprovoked war on Iran, the character of the assault has
become clear: a massive bombardment aimed at the systematic destruction
of the Iranian state and the subjugation of an entire population.
Reports
indicate that in the first 48 hours alone, US and Israeli forces struck
roughly 1,200 targets, using 2,000-pound bombs and conducting
decapitation strikes to murder senior political and military leadership.
The bombardment has focused on disabling Iran’s air defenses and the
basic nervous system of the country—anti-aircraft batteries, radar,
communications networks and command-and-control systems—in preparation
for an even more devastating assault.
As of Monday afternoon
Eastern Time, at least 742 civilians have been reported killed in Iran,
including 176 children, with more than 900 injured, according to Human
Rights Activists in Iran (HRANA).
Trump has reveled in the
slaughter. “We’re knocking the crap out of them,” he told a cable TV
anchor, issuing an explicit threat of far greater killing to come: “We
haven’t even started hitting them hard. … The big one is coming soon.”
Trump has declared that the war could last “four to five weeks” and
possibly “far longer.” In a social media post late on Monday night,
Trump declared that “wars can be fought ‘forever’” with US weapons
stockpiles.
Speaking to the far-right New York Post,
Trump declared, “I don’t have the yips with respect to boots on the
ground. Like every president says, ‘There will be no boots on the
ground.’ I don’t say it.”
The pyromaniacs in the Trump
administration and their allies in Israel are setting the entire region
aflame and threatening to plunge the world into a catastrophe of
staggering dimensions.
The justifications and “explanations”
issued by the White House shift by the day and even by the hour. Trump
and his aides cannot give a consistent account of why this war was
launched, what “threat” it supposedly answers or what outcome they claim
to be pursuing. Trump himself has acknowledged that his plans for a
“transition” after the murder of Ayatollah Khamenei were disrupted by
the fact that they had killed everyone in the leadership of the Iranian
state.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press briefing at the Pentagon, Monday, March 2, 2026, in Washington. [AP Photo]
What
predominates in Washington is utter gangsterism. This was the political
content of the first official military briefing at the Pentagon since
the attack began, held Monday morning. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
used the briefing to proclaim, “Two days ago, under the direction and
direct orders of President Donald J. Trump, the Department of War
launched Operation Epic Fury, the most-lethal, most-complex and
most-precise aerial operation in history.”
The “most lethal”
aerial operation in history? Presumably that means more lethal than the
firebombing massacres of the Second World War, including the
incineration of Tokyo, which killed at least 100,000 people, and the
atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed 90,000 and
60,000, respectively.
Hegseth made clear in his remarks that
there is no line that the US military will not cross. The war would be
fought, he boasted, “All on our terms, with maximum authorities, no
stupid rules of engagement, no nation-building quagmire, no
democracy-building exercise, no politically correct wars. We fight to
win …”
This is a declaration of intent to wage war as the Nazis
did. Hegseth, imitating Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels,
declares “total war”: the US won’t be constrained by international or
domestic law. This is precisely what the Nuremberg Tribunal condemned in
judging the Third Reich: the launching of aggressive war as a “crime
against peace”—the “supreme international crime”—which led ultimately to
the execution of those responsible.
Baying for blood, Hegseth
extolled the “warrior ethos,” declaring: “We are not defenders anymore.
We are warriors, trained to kill the enemy and break their will.” At one
point, Hegseth hailed Israel as “capable partners … unlike so many of
our traditional allies who wring their hands and clutch their pearls,
hemming and hawing about the use of force.” That is, the Israeli
genocide in Gaza is to be the model for Iran.
The entire briefing
had a menacing tone: A regime that has launched an illegal war and is
preparing mass killing is simultaneously declaring that it owes the
American people no explanation and will tolerate no questioning. When a
reporter cited Trump’s statement that the bombing would continue for
“four to five weeks,” Hegseth sneered that it was a “gotcha question.”
The White House and the Pentagon recognize no constraint on their
actions other than what Trump earlier described as his own “morality.”
The
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) convened an emergency Board
of Governors session on March 2 after Iran alleged that the Natanz
nuclear enrichment facility was struck. In his statement, Director
General Rafael Grossi warned that “we cannot rule out a possible
radiological release with serious consequences, including the necessity
to evacuate areas as large or larger than major cities” if attacks on
nuclear sites continue.
Hegseth’s remarks also pointed to the next
stage of escalation. Refusing to rule out “boots on the ground,” he
echoed Trump’s own statements and left open the prospect of a US-led
invasion—i.e., a full-scale land war against a country of roughly 93
million people.
The 2003 Iraq invasion began with about 145,000 US
troops, which US officials described as only “a fraction of what would
be needed to invade Iran.” Iran is larger, more mountainous, and more
populous than Iraq, and far more capable of sustaining prolonged
resistance. Any attempt at regime change by ground conquest would, by
any serious measure, require several hundred thousand troops at the
outset, with vastly larger forces demanded by occupation and internal
control.
Standard counterinsurgency and occupation planning by the
strategists of US imperialism uses a benchmark of roughly 20–25
security personnel per 1,000 residents; applied to Iran’s population,
that implies a total presence on the order of roughly 1.9 to 2.3 million
troops.
A war on this scale cannot be fought without the total
subordination of American society to war. The immense costs will be
imposed through a massive assault on the working class. At the same
time, the government will be compelled to suppress opposition by force. A
prolonged war against a country of 93 million people requires not only
bombs and troops abroad but a ferocious police state at home.
The
utter criminality of the Trump administration’s foreign policy is
inseparable from its war on the Constitution and democratic rights
within the United States. The regime is openly preparing measures to rig
the 2026 elections—or even suspend them entirely—through bogus claims
of mass voting by “illegal aliens,” while issuing threats that
opponents of its policies of war, austerity and repression will be
rounded up en masse.
The Trump regime has initiated a war whose
consequences they neither foresee nor control. There is an element of
insanity in its actions, but it is an insanity rooted in class
interests. The war against Iran arises out of decades of expanding US
aggression, driven by the imperative of American imperialism to counter
its economic decline through military violence.
At the same time,
the Trump administration confronts an escalating political crisis at
home, intensified by the Epstein revelations, which have ripped away any
remaining veil from the operations of a criminal oligarchy. A
government mired in crimes and threatened by growing popular anger
responds as such governments always do: It seeks salvation in war.
In
the corporate media and throughout the political establishment there is
no serious explanation, let alone indictment, of the origins and
consequences of this war: for the Iranian people, for the region
threatened with conflagration and for the entire world.
It is not
the Democratic Party that Trump fears. He knows very well that the
Democratic leadership is on its knees, begging only for a seat at the
war table. This week, Senate and House Democrats are proceeding with two
separate political charades, pretending to oppose the war but actually
doing nothing.
The Senate will vote on legislation under the War
Powers Act restricting Trump’s actions in Iran. Even if it passes, which
is unlikely, it would not be by the margin required to overcome the
inevitable Trump veto. The House Democrats avoided this problem by
presenting their “antiwar” bill as a mere resolution, which does not
have the force of law and would not represent the slightest obstacle to
Trump’s criminal war.
This is not opposition to war but
collaboration. The Democratic Party is a party of Wall Street and
American imperialism. It defends the same class interests as the
Republicans and is committed to the global operations of US militarism.
Its principal fear is not Trump’s war and dictatorship, but the
emergence of a movement from below.
The intensifying war crisis underscores the urgency of the statement
issued by the Socialist Equality Party National Committee yesterday,
“Stop the criminal US-Israeli war against Iran!” The statement outlined
the basis upon which the fight against war must be waged:
First,
the struggle against war must be based on the working class, the great
revolutionary force in society, uniting behind it all progressive
elements in the population.
Second, the new
anti-war movement must be anti-capitalist and socialist, since there can
be no serious struggle against war except in the fight to end the
dictatorship of finance capital and the economic system that is the
fundamental cause of militarism and war.
Third,
the new anti-war movement must be completely and unequivocally
independent of, and hostile to, all political parties and organizations
of the capitalist class.
Fourth, the new anti-war
movement must, above all, be international, mobilizing the vast power
of the working class in a unified global struggle against imperialism.
We
call on workers and youth to mobilize against this criminal war and the
entire US-Israeli assault on the Middle East. The factories, ports,
logistics hubs, schools and hospitals must become centers of discussion
and organized resistance. Call meetings to demand the immediate end of
this war. Expose the lies that justify this aggression, reject every
attempt to silence opposition, and take up the fight for an
international socialist program against war and dictatorship.
Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney rushed to declare Canada’s
full-throated support for the criminal US-Israeli war against Iran, in a
statement issued just hours after the first wave of missiles and bombs
rained down on the country Saturday morning.
Speaking for the
Canadian ruling elite as a whole, Carney justified this unprovoked,
illegal war of aggression that is aimed at imposing regime-change on
Iran and asserting unchallenged US hegemony over the world’s most
important energy-exporting region.
*****
Repeating would-be dictator Donald Trump’s lying war propaganda,
Carney declared from India, “Canada supports the United States acting to
prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and to prevent its regime
from threatening international peace and security. Canada’s position
remains clear: the Islamic Republic of Iran is the principal source of
instability and terror throughout the Middle East, has one of the
world’s worst human rights records, and must never be allowed to obtain
or develop nuclear weapons.”
In an official statement issued
almost simultaneously, Carney deplored that “despite diplomatic efforts,
Iran has neither fully dismantled its nuclear program, halted all
enrichment activities, nor ended its support for regional terrorist
proxy groups.” Carney also asserted that “Israel has the right to defend
itself.”
The truth of the matter is that Iran has always insisted
that its nuclear activities are for civilian use only. No evidence has
ever been produced to support the claim that Tehran is seeking to build
nuclear weapons, as the western-dominated International Atomic Energy
Agency has itself repeatedly stated.
Moreover, it was Trump who
in 2018 torpedoed the UN-backed Iran nuclear accord and unilaterally
imposed massive, globally-enforced economic sanctions on Iran with the
stated aimed of crashing its economy and precipitating regime change.
For
decades Iran has been the target of aggression by the US, Israel and
their NATO allies— including war threats and Iran’s encirclement by a
massive complex of military bases, cyber-warfare and assassinations of
nuclear scientists, punishing economic sanctions, and imperialist
regime-change wars in neighboring states (Iraq and Afghanistan)—making
a mockery of Carney’s assertion that it is the main aggressor in the
region.
*****
As US and Israeli forces struck targets across the country, including
a girls’ school in which reportedly 153 people were killed, Carney
cynically asserted that “Canada stands with the Iranian people in their
long and courageous struggle against Iran’s oppressive regime.” He
emphasized Canada’s longstanding support for regime change in Iran,
recalling that “Canada has listed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps
as a terrorist entity, and has sanctioned 256 Iranian entities and 222
individuals” in recent years.
In offering its unreserved and
enthusiastic support for the war against Iran, Carney’s statement went
even further than the initial comments offered by other allies of US
imperialism. Whereas the EU foreign policy chief hypocritically called
for “maximum restraint,” and French President Emmanuel Macron decried
the “ongoing escalation” and said it “must stop” —all in an effort to
cast Iranian retaliation as “aggression” and offer their own support for
the regime-change operation—Carney did not even attempt to conceal or
soften Canada’s total support for the illegal US-Israeli war.
The Liberal government’s enthusiastic embrace of this war of aggression
illustrates in stark terms the true nature of its conflict with the
Trump administration and the call Carney issued at the World Economic
Forum in Davos for an alliance of “middle powers” that could “act
together” to navigate a world riven by great-power conflict. In the
context of Trump’s threat to annex Canada and his “America first” trade
war policies, Carney acknowledged that the “rules-based international
order” under US hegemony was at an end and had, in fact, always been a
fraud. But when the interests of Canadian imperialism align with those
of the US hegemon, as they do in the imperialist drive to reorganize the
Middle East, Canada will not hesitate to support any crime.
*****
It is highly likely that Canadian forces are directly involved in the
present war. So-called exchange officers from the Canadian Armed Forces
were based at the US Fifth Fleet’s headquarters in Bahrain and would
have been involved in operational planning, a former CAF senior officer
told CBC. The Department of Defense has unconvincingly sought to assert
that this was not the case.
A lesser imperialist power, Canada seeks its share of the profits from
exploiting the natural resources and economic opportunities opened up by
the fall of the Iranian regime and the broader reorganization of the
Middle East under US leadership. As the US confronts China with trade
war, a massive military build-up, and increasing violent outbursts of
imperialist aggression, Canadian imperialism has desperately sought to
prove its worth as a junior partner.
*****
Carney no doubt recognizes that there is massive popular opposition to
Israel’s war crimes and its genocide in Gaza, which would render his
attempt to cast this war as an effort to defend “human rights” and
international peace absurd. Moreover, minimizing Israel’s role in the
war against Iran helps conceal the ways that US imperialism’s garrison
state will be rewarded in the imperialist carve-up of the Middle East,
given carte blanche to intensify its attempts to impose a
“final solution” to the Palestinian question and create a “Greater
Israel” by ethnically cleansing the West Bank and Gaza.
The new US‑Israeli war against Iran is the latest chapter in a
continuous 35‑year trajectory of imperialist intervention, regime‑change
operations and proxy warfare across the Middle East. Since the 1990s
the United States, backed by its NATO partners and regional client
states, has repeatedly relied on military force, economic strangulation
and covert action to reshape the region’s political economy in favor of
transnational capital. The World Socialist Web Site has repeatedly shown that these
operations are driven by strategic competition over energy, trade routes
and the balance of power among rival capitalist states—not by
humanitarian concerns or the defense of “democracy.”
*****
Imperialism will not be contained by appeals to the powers that created
it. Only the organized international working class, acting independently
and on a socialist program, can halt the drive to regional catastrophe
and open the path to truly democratic, egalitarian solutions.
At this point the most significant impact on the global economy is the
closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow passage at the mouth of the
Persian Gulf, through which one fifth of the global supply of oil passes
as well as a fifth of liquefied natural gas (LNG).
*****
European natural gas prices surged by 50 percent yesterday because of
the cut in supplies from Qatar which are shipped through the Strait.
The state-owned energy company said it had halted production of LNG and
other products because of military attacks on two of its production
facilities.
Reflecting widely held views, Joseph Capurson, the
head of global economics at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia said: “Of
all the possible Middle East scenarios, the current state of play is
one of the worst for the global economy. We expect the situation to
escalate before it de-escalates.”
Stock markets around the world,
after some initial falls, remained basically steady. But there were
indications of concerns about financial stability. The New York Times
reported there had been a wave of “emergency buying” of the dollar in
Asia sending down regional currencies including the Japanese yen.
At
the same time, however, US bond prices fell in another indication that
US government debt is no longer regarded as a “safe haven” in conditions
of turbulence. As the Financial Times (FT) noted: “This forms
yet another piece of anecdotal data suggesting that US Treasuries are
losing their status as the world’s go-to asset in times of crisis—the
result, investors say, of erratic geopolitical and economic policy and
the erosion of institutions under Trump.”
Increasingly gold is considered the only safe asset. Its price rose to
$5400 to hit a new record yesterday. The gold price has risen 80 percent
in the past year and by more than 54 percent in the past six months—an
indication of the growing lack of confidence in the US dollar as the
global fiat currency.
*****
The threat of stagflation arises from the prospect that if the oil
price rises stay at elevated levels, then an inflation surge could
result and central banks will start lifting, rather than reducing, their
interest rates, hitting a weakening global economy.
The
already
fragile financial system is also threatened under conditions where
increasing concerns about its stability have been voiced. These center
on whether the massive investments in AI data centers are going to pay
off, what is the impact of developments in AI on whole areas of the
software industry and how much this may affect private equity firms
which have piled into the financing of these firms in recent years.
Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) arrested TikTok
content creator Peter Maingi Kimani, widely known as Menelik Kimani,
last Thursday after tracking him to a hideout in Gatundu.
The
24-year-old had gone underground earlier last week following the
widespread circulation of a satirical video against Kenyan President
William Ruto. Although he was released Friday, the DCI continues to hold
his mobile phone, confiscated without a court order.
In the video, Kimani addressed Ruto, declaring: “President William
Ruto; ignore me at your own risk. I ask for a challenge between me and
your government.” He proclaimed that “a real king doesn’t come through
the ballot box,” but through royal and biblical lineage, asserting that
power should be seized “by force.” He issued a seven-day ultimatum for
the president to “prepare your army for war,” claiming he would go to
“visit State House” if no response was forthcoming.
These
satirical remarks were seized upon by Ruto’s “broad-based unity”
government—an alliance between the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) and
the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), founded by the late political
fixer Raila Odinga—as a pretext to arrest him. The move forms part of an
escalating campaign to intimidate political opposition, particularly
social media users.
Days before, Booker Omole, General Secretary of the Communist Party
Marxist–Kenya (CPM-K), was seized by plainclothes officers without a
warrant, beaten and denied immediate access to legal counsel or medical
care days. Omole remains in detention on fabricated and politically motivated charges,
including claims of links to a “drug cartel” and to kidnapped
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. He has been transferred to
overcrowded Kitengela Remand Prison with a broken arm, denied bail and
subjected to degrading treatment. The next hearing is scheduled for
March 9.
After arresting Kimani, the DCI posted a statement that
“While freedom of expression is guaranteed in the Constitution, its
enjoyment should not be used as a tool to promote or justify the
violation of the rights of others”. The DCI threatened “that no effort
will be spared in addressing any irresponsible use of social media,
especially where there is a threat to peace and security.”
The
Kenyan regime has systematically gunned down and teargassed protesters
exercising their right to freedom of assembly and expression. Reports by
the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR) show that police
have killed 246 protesters from 2023 to mid-2025, including 118 in 2023
alone and 51 within five days of July protests against soaring costs of
living. The 2024 Gen-Z protests
against International Monetary Fund (IMF)-dictated austerity and tax
hikes escalated, claiming 63 lives, injuring over 601, leading to 1,765
unlawful detentions, and 82 forced disappearances. By September 2025,
additional unrest added 65 deaths and more than 500 injuries.
*****
Over the past two years, millions of youth and workers have utilised
platforms such as X, TikTok and WhatsApp to organise demonstrations and
coordinate opposition to the Ruto regime. These have enabled rapid mass mobilization on a scale unprecedented in Kenya’s six decades since
independence.
*****
The US-Israeli-led imperialist war against Iran will have profound
consequences for the Kenyan working class. The war in the Middle East is
disrupting global energy markets and supply chains, driving up fuel
prices worldwide. For oil-dependent Kenya, this will translate into
higher transport and production costs, pushing up the price of food and
other basic commodities.
This new wave of economic pain will
arrive on the heels of the domestic repression, mountain of debt and a
country under the boot of the IMF. As the cost of living becomes
unbearable, the Ruto regime will intensify its repression.
The defense of democratic rights and opposition to austerity in Kenya and
the struggle against war are one and the same struggle against
imperialism. This fight must be linked to the battle to defend workers’
living standards, oppose oligarchy and fight for social equality. This
perspective is the program of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).
The criminal US-Israeli war against Iran that is supported by Keir
Starmer and the Labour government has thrown hundreds of thousands of UK
citizens into the firestorm threatening the entire Middle East.
Starmer’s speeches about his “duty to protect British lives” are
repulsive lies.
Roughly 300,000 British citizens are in Gulf
countries, where airspace has been closed, grounding flights. Many have
been trapped on short-term visits, or in transit through the region’s
international hubs.
*****
Labour has endangered the lives of its citizens for a war which they
overwhelmingly oppose. A YouGov poll published Monday found that almost
half of those surveyed (49 percent) were opposed to the US-Israeli
bombing of Iran, with only 28 percent supportive.
And this has
been done by a government already suffering some of the worst approval
ratings in modern British history. Aware of its isolation, Labour is
cynically trying to use the disastrous situation the UK and its allies
have created, and the risks posed to UK citizens, as justification for
its escalating involvement.
“It is clear that Iran’s outrageous
response has become a threat to our people, our interests and our
allies, and it cannot be ignored,” Starmer told Parliament, accusing
Tehran of having “lashed out”.
*****
The Labour government is telling workers black is white. British jets
are taking to the skies of the Middle East to help protect US military
outposts as it wages an illegal campaign against Iran, British airbases
are providing launchpads for US bombing sorties, and a British base in
Cyprus is being targeted and hit by drones, with families evacuated.
In his eagerness to malign Iran, Starmer acknowledged the reality that
British forces are entirely intertwined with the US offensive, telling
Parliament, “On Saturday, Iran hit a military base in Bahrain with
missiles and drones. There were 300 British personnel on the base, some
within a few hundred yards of the strike.”
*****
The experiences of Afghanistan and Iraq have not been forgotten. Their
lessons have been driven home by the UK’s steadfast support of Israel’s
years-long genocide of the Palestinians and military strikes against
Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. Large numbers will take to the streets to
oppose this latest crime—swelled by the immediate threat to those in the
region and by the economic consequences of the conflict at home.
*****
That Starmer and the Labour Party are proceeding regardless is proof not
only of the deeply reactionary, right-wing character of their
government but of the deep crisis of British imperialism, desperately
gambling on another brutal US war in the Middle East to improve its
fortunes. These are the real threats to “British lives” and peace.
Over 100 demonstrations took place in towns and cities across Greece
on Saturday to commemorate the third anniversary of February 28, 2023 Tempi rail disaster which took the lives of 57 mainly young people. Dozens more protests were again held in cities across Europe, in the United States and Australia.
The
horrific deaths following the collision between a freight and passenger
train were a crime of capitalism, resulting from an unsafe train
network caused by years of cuts by successive governments and its
eventual privatization in 2017. These included the 2015-19 Syriza
(Coalition of the Radical Left) government, which was responsible for the privatization of the railways in 2017.
The
biggest demonstration took place in Syntagma Square in central Athens,
with tens of thousands gathering outside the parliament building. Many
brought home-made placards and flowers were laid in the square where the
names of the dead had been written in red in front of parliament.
Protesters gather in London, England
Two Greek migrants speak to World Socialist Web Site reporters in Manchester, England
Germany’s ruling class is preparing to introduce a social media ban for
young people. This has become clear in public debates and party
conference resolutions in recent weeks. Parties and media of every
stripe are clamoring for a crackdown on social media.
*****
Germany is not alone in these plans. After Australia introduced
a social media ban for young people under age 16 last December, dozens
of countries worldwide are planning similar bans. The French National
Assembly recently passed a social media ban for young people under age
15. President Macron is pushing for its enforcement by the new school
year. Similar restrictions are also being discussed or put in place in
Spain, Italy, Belgium and Denmark.
The social media ban is being
justified in that it would allegedly protect children and young people.
It is supposed to especially protect against mental health problems such
as online addiction, sleep or eating disorders as a result of the use
of social media.
Claims the planned bans are about the well-being
of young people is a blatant lie. Scientifically speaking, the positive
benefit of a social media ban for young people is at best disputed. In
Australia, the overwhelming majority of mental health advocacy groups
rejected a social media ban. With a ban, the risk of social isolation
increases sharply, especially among vulnerable groups.
Coming from
the government and parliamentary parties, the claim that they care
about the welfare of young people is particularly hypocritical. For
decades they have been smashing apart the welfare state, letting schools
and other educational institutions rot, and robbing young people of any
future prospects.
*****
The ruling class is completely indifferent to the well-being
of youth—whether it is young people in Germany who have been neglected
for decades, Ukrainians and Russians who must give their lives in the
interests of imperialism, or Palestinian children who are being killed
by the thousands by Israel with support from Germany.
What the
social media ban is really about is the attempt to curb the growing politicization, radicalization and international networking of youth. In
a situation where bourgeois media are only broadcasting war propaganda,
it is often social media that offers young people a differentiated
perspective.
Through live reports about wars and crises around the world, young
people are increasingly recognizing that capitalism has nothing left to
offer them except poverty and death, and that the explanations of
official politics are empty rhetoric and lies. At the same time, young
people are searching for an alternative perspective and not infrequently
encounter a socialist one through social media.
In recent years,
hundreds of thousands of young people around the world have participated
in protests against the genocide in Gaza, which they were able to
follow on social media. At present, a movement against war and the
reintroduction of conscription is developing among young people and
young adults. Both movements are based on information that young people
obtain through social media. At the same time, they enable young people
to network internationally.
*****
Workers and young people must firmly reject this ban. The plans to ban
social media are a serious warning. Germany is rearming as has not been
seen since Hitler and is preparing for a third world war, for which the
youth are to be sent into the trenches and brought into line. This must
be prevented.
New Zealand’s National Party-led coalition government has lined up
squarely behind the criminal US‑Israeli onslaught on Iran, signalling
once again that NZ’s ruling class fully supports Washington’s
imperialist war to conquer the Middle East and impose its global
hegemony.
In a statement dripping with lies and hypocrisy, Prime Minister
Christopher Luxon and Foreign Minister Winston Peters said on March 1:
“We acknowledge that the actions taken overnight by the US and Israel
were designed to prevent Iran from continuing to threaten international
peace and security.”
Echoing almost word for word the Trump
administration’s war propaganda, Luxon and Peters declared, “The Iranian
people must be allowed to determine their future.”
They cynically
condemned Iran’s retaliatory strikes targeting Israel and US bases in
the Middle East, saying, “We cannot risk further regional escalation,
and civilian life must be protected.”
Speaking to Radio NZ (RNZ),
Luxon called the Iranian regime “evil” and said “our position is the
same as the Australian position.” Australia’s Labor Party PM Anthony
Albanese has fully endorsed the US war.
Last Thursday about 1,500 early childhood educators marched in
Melbourne—their second statewide 24-hour strike in five months—fighting
poverty level wages, chronic understaffing, unpaid overtime and
burdensome administrative work.
The Australian Education Union
(AEU) called the limited strike amid mounting rank-and-file anger over
the state Labor government’s failure to present a wage offer after 20
months of negotiations.
Hundreds of early education workers from
metropolitan regions were joined by hundreds of kindergarten teachers
and assistant workers from regional centers, including Ballarat,
Bendigo, Geelong, Seymour and Warragul, forcing the closure of thousands
of kindergartens.
Surveys show up to half of early childhood
educators are frequently considering leaving the profession because
workloads and pay are unsustainable. Some starting salaries are as low
as $70,000 a year. Workers are demanding reduced workloads and a 35
percent wage increase over four years.
*****
In Victoria, service cuts are being justified on the basis of a
projected $188 billion state debt, much of it accumulated through
corporate subsidies during the acute phase of the COVID pandemic. That
aligns with the federal Labor government’s broader offensive against
social spending while hundreds of billions of dollars are directed
toward military expansion. This agenda underscores the fact that the
crisis confronting educators is not accidental but is rooted in the
priorities of the corporate profit-driven system.
The discontent
of educators is increasing across Australia. In Queensland, 50,000
teachers walked off the job last year and in Tasmania teachers went on
staggered morning and half-day strikes disrupting classes across Hobart
and other cities.
Similar struggles are erupting internationally.
Teachers in New Zealand and the United Kingdom have struck over wages
and staffing shortages. In San Francisco last month thousands of
teachers joined their first major strike since 1979.
While these
struggles reveal workers’ readiness to fight, union leaderships
everywhere have intervened to restrict their development and block the
necessary unified challenge to the existing social order.
The chairman of the German Left Party, Jan van Aken, initially
responded to the illegal attack by the US and Israel on Iran with what
appeared to be a condemnation. In an official statement, he spoke of a
“major danger for the population and the entire region” and described
the attack as a violation of international law. But this criticism is
merely a political cover. Behind a few phrases about diplomacy and
international law, the Left Party openly aligns itself with the
strategic aims of the imperialist war.
Van Aken made this
unmistakably clear at a press conference on Monday. There, he openly
celebrated the killing of Iranian head of state Khamenei and other
leading figures by Israeli and American bombs. He declared verbatim:
There
is absolutely no doubt that we all—I personally as well—am glad that
Khamenei is dead, that many figures from the regime are dead. One should
never rejoice over the death of a human being, and yet I think it is
good that they are gone and may they rot in hell.
Everyone
should take note of these words. The leader of a party that officially
describes itself as pacifist and left-wing welcomes the targeted killing
of a country’s political leadership through foreign bombardment. The
attack itself is, as van Aken acknowledges, a clear violation of
international law. At the Nuremberg trials, such a war of aggression was
condemned as a “crime against peace.” Anyone who applauds the results
of this crime—moreover in language reminiscent of the fascistic US
President Trump—politically identifies with it.
*****
The German bourgeoisie does not want to stand aside in the imperialist
redivision of the world and therefore largely supports US war policy—at
least as long as it is not yet in a position to act militarily
independent of, and ultimately even against, Washington. When some of
its “left” representatives, such as van Aken, raise the issue of the
obviously illegal actions of the US and call on the Merz government to
do the same, this reflects not only growing transatlantic conflicts but
also concern that the war of aggression against Iran could undermine the
propaganda with which NATO justifies its war offensive against Russia.
On February 12, Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer
intervened to suppress the contract struggle of academic workers at the
University of Michigan (U-M). Micki Czerniak, a state mediator appointed
by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission (MERC), ordered a
mandatory 28-day pause in negotiations between the university
administration and the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO).
This
“cooling-off” period functions as a de facto state injunction. It is a
political maneuver designed to break the workers’ momentum, criminalize
their use of their basic democratic rights and shield the university
administration from the demands of the rank and file.
*****
The timing is decisive. The state and university have chosen a window in
the academic calendar when the GEO’s most potent leverage—the
withholding of teaching, grading and end-of-term work—can be
neutralized. Pushing bargaining into the final weeks before term’s end
reduces picket pressure as students disperse and allows the
administration to dock pay and to prepare scab staffing or automated
replacements over the summer. It forces exhausted, cash-strapped
graduate workers to choose between immediate survival and sustained
resistance. This is a repetition of the exact “Summer Break” trap that
led to the 2023 betrayal.
*****
The immediate driver of the contract dispute is a brutal economic
grinder that is systematically reducing academic workers to destitution.
Non-PhD graduate student workers at U-M are currently paid poverty
wages, with annual stipends stagnating around $29,000.
Against
this fixed income, the cost of living in Ann Arbor has become entirely
unlivable. Studio apartments in Ann Arbor now average $2,043 per month, a
staggering 17 percent annual increase.
The persistent claim by
the Board of Regents that there is “no money” to meet the union’s
demands for a living wage is a transparent, empirically verifiable lie.
The refusal to pay is a deliberate class policy designed to protect the
university’s multibillion-dollar endowment.
While starving its educators, the university is awash in massive
infusions of defense funding, functioning as an intellectual node in the
logistical and strategic preparations for global imperialist war.
*****
The struggle of AAPS educators is being actively suppressed by the
Ann Arbor Education Association (AAEA) and the Michigan Education
Association (MEA). AAEA President Fred Klein allowed the contract to
lapse without organizing any fight, explicitly endorsing the district’s
strategy of reducing staff through attrition.
The union
bureaucracy’s limited job actions, such as suspending voluntary
extracurricular supervision, are cynical pressure tactics designed to
let off steam while avoiding a genuine confrontation with the Democratic
Party establishment that oversees this austerity.
*****
Educators must draw the necessary political conclusions. The fight
for living wages in Michigan is inextricably linked to the global fight
against World War III and capitalist barbarism.
GEO members must
immediately convene rank-and-file meetings. They should elect an
accountable strike committee, publish a non-negotiable demands list (a
living stipend indexed to local cost-of-living, immediate backpay, no
reprisals, public livestreamed bargaining with elected worker delegates,
and a categorical pledge by the university not to cooperate with ICE),
and begin a city-wide and cross-sector solidarity outreach to faculty,
service workers, AAPS educators and municipal unions in Detroit.
They
should demand the release of national union strike resources and
prepare for continuous picketing that prevents the administration from
simply waiting out the term. Publicize every instance of university
collusion with military and intelligence funding so the campus fight
becomes a political issue the administration cannot hide.
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.
