For more than nine months, five children from the El Gamal family have been imprisoned at a “family detention” center in Dilley, Texas, despite none of them being accused of committing a crime.
The family, including five children now aged 5, 5, 9, 16 and 18, has been held since June 3, 2025. Their continued detention is based solely on their relation to a family member accused of committing a violent act. In sworn testimony submitted to the US Senate Judiciary Committee, the children and their mother state that they had no knowledge of or involvement in the alleged crime.
The treatment of the El Gamal family revives the Nazi policy of Sippenhaft, under which authorities inflicted punishment on relatives of accused individuals in order to intimidate the broader population.
In a letter accompanying the children’s testimony, attorneys Eric Lee, Chris Godshall-Bennett and Niels Frenzen condemned the detention regime imposed on the family.
“When an adult confines a child, denies them medical care, bars their access to education, and feeds them meals that contain dirt, worms and fingernails, the law rightly brands such person a criminal and strips them of custodial rights,” the attorneys wrote.
“How can it be, then, that when the United States government systematically inflicts these same outrages upon hundreds of children in its custody as a matter of official policy, the executive branch claims it is administering justice and enforcing acts of Congress?”
The lawyers noted that the letters submitted by the children constitute a devastating record of abuse.
“The El Gamal children’s letters establish that the United States government is engaged in an effort to crush children’s spirits and spoil their innocence,” they wrote, adding that the family’s treatment is not the result of bureaucratic oversight but the “intended result of official White House policy to punish this family.”
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The Dilley detention facility has long been the target of protests over the conditions imposed on migrant families. Last year, hundreds of detained children protested inside the facility, while community members rallied outside demanding their release.
The camp has also been the site of repeated disease outbreaks, including multiple measles cases reported earlier this year.
The continued imprisonment of the El Gamal family exposes the real character of the US immigration detention regime. A government that claims to defend democracy abroad is imprisoning children for months because of the alleged actions of a relative.
If the state can detain this family indefinitely despite their innocence, the precedent is clear. The same methods can be used against workers, students and political opponents.
At the same time that the US government is bombing school children, hospitals and residential homes in the name of “security,” it is inflicting profound psychological trauma on children inside detention camps within the United States.
The demand must be the immediate release of the El Gamal family.
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The Socialist Equality Party reiterates its call for the creation and expansion of neighborhood and workplace defense committees, united with workers in the US and globally through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC). This network of committees, organized independently of the corporate-controlled union bureaucracies and the entire political establishment, must advance the following demands:
All immigrant detention centers, including Dilley, must be closed immediately, with those released free to live and work where they please.
A massive public health program must be launched to test everyone at Dilley, in the surrounding community, and wherever measles is currently spreading in the US, with patients safely isolated and treated.
Vast resources must be provided to vaccinate all those eligible for the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR), COVID-19, influenza and other vaccines essential for public health, both in the US and internationally.
All ICE operations, detentions, deportations and the criminalization of migration must end now.
2. Student workers hold “Last Chance” pickets across University of California System
On March 12th, hundreds of University of California student workers, teaching assistants and researchers participated in “last chance” rallies across the 10-campus system. Workers are demanding cost-of-living adjustments, critical wage increases and hours guarantees, expanded housing and adequate funding for programs.
Around 40,000 UC workers in United Auto Workers Local 4811 voted overwhelmingly to strike, but have been kept on the job by union officials nearly two weeks since their contract expired on March 1.
At the University of California Berkeley, approximately 600 students demonstrated Thursday. At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), approximately 300 student workers participated. Students expressed a determination to fight, not only for improvements to working conditions, but against the assault on the sciences being carried out by the Trump administration.
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University of California student workers have been a major center of working class militancy in recent years. In 2019 and 2020, UC workers at the Santa Cruz campus conducted months-long wildcat actions demanding cost of living adjustments. In 2022, workers across the UC system conducted a five-week strike, in the course of which they rejected a sellout agreement pushed by the UAW bureaucracy. In 2024, workers launched a strike against UC administrators’ violent crackdown against Gaza protests.
“I was here and participated in the 2022 strike, as well as the 2024 strike, and now I’m here for this one,” one worker said.
Volunteers with the Will Lehman campaign found broad support for the platform Lehman is running on. Volunteers distributed the campaign statement “University of California academic workers: Enforce your strike mandate!”
Lehman’s statement accused UAW officials of ignoring workers’ vote to strike. “I urge UC workers on every campus to organize rank-and-file committees consisting of academic and other campus workers, along with students, to enforce the will of the membership and prepare a university-wide strike,” Lehman said.
He continued: “A strike by more than 40,000 UC workers will give a powerful impulse to the growing movement of educators, healthcare workers and other sections of the working class across California and the US against the corporate and financial oligarchy that the Trump administration speaks for.”
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The UAW bureaucracy is doing its best to try to keep in front of rank-and-file anger before they lose control. A critical role is being played by pseudo-left tendencies which insist that graduate students adopt a strategy of “pressuring” the union apparatus, rather than organizing rank-and-file committees to take democratic control over the struggle.
UAW local officials at the University of California system have issued statements opposing the war against Iran and the murder of Alex Pretti. But they have proposed no action to fight war and police dictatorship other than that graduate students call their congresspeople.
The decision to hold “practice pickets,” rather than calling a strike, is part of their maneuvering. It is an attempt to get ahead of the workers through empty posturing. The “strike ready” picket was notably used by the Teamsters in 2023 so that they could present a sellout contract as the product of a “credible strike threat.” Since then, tens of thousands of UPS workers have lost their jobs.
UC workers have innumerable and powerful allies in the working class. This includes 10,000 California State University (CSU) workers, who endure the same working conditions and are also members of the UAW. To avoid a situation where 48,000 University of California workers and 10,000 California State University workers are on strike simultaneously, the UAW local 4123 unilaterally extended the contract beyond its original expiration date. This was done without any vote or input from the membership, in an effort to delay the threat of a strike until at least September.
UC workers must organize to break through the delays and enforce the democratic will of the membership to strike, while also imposing real control over bargaining to prevent a sellout. This means forming rank-and-file strike committees, composed of grad students and independent of the UAW bureaucracy, including the radical-sounding leadership of local 4811.
The strike vote and the emergence of the UC student workers as a section of the working class in struggle is part of a broader movement of the working class in the United States and Internationally. The UC students must consciously link up their struggles with the growing struggle of workers in every sector of the economy, from public education, to nurses, autoworkers, postal workers and oil refinery workers.
3. United Nations condemns Iran’s self-defense strikes amid American imperialism’s war of extermination
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) effectively endorsed the US-Israeli war against Iran Wednesday with the passage of Resolution 2817 (2026). The text “condemns in the strongest terms” Iran’s retaliatory strikes on the Gulf states, while saying nothing about the nearly two-week-long bombardment of the country of 90 million people by American imperialism and its Israeli ally.
The resolution’s pretext is that Iran launched retaliatory strikes against seven countries—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. But all seven host US military bases actively being used to wage the war on Iran—from the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain, to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, to Al Dhafra in the UAE. These states are not neutral bystanders. They are, in effect, combatants. Iranian strikes on their territories were launched in self-defense and have killed approximately 11 civilians. The US and Israel have killed over 1,300 people in Iran alone.
The resolution did not even note the fact that the United States, led by the fascist Donald Trump, launched an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, a historically oppressed country, on February 28. Ably assisted by its Zionist ally, Washington carried out within a matter of hours the targeted assassination of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and dozens of other leading political and military personnel of an ostensibly sovereign state.
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The resolution passed by 13 votes to 0. Reading as if the UN representatives had simply transcribed American imperialism’s war aims, the press release announcing passage of the resolution stated, “It specifically condemned Iran’s attacks against residential areas and civilian objects—demanding their immediate cessation—while also demanding that Tehran halt its threats, provocations and actions aimed at interfering with maritime trade, as well as support to proxy groups across the region.”
Countries voting in favor of this outrageous document included the permanent members Britain, France and the United States, as well as non-permanent members Bahrain, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Denmark, Greece, Latvia, Liberia, Pakistan, Panama and Somalia.
Particularly significant is the fact that Russia and China, both permanent members of the UNSC and thus in a position to veto the resolution, chose instead to abstain and allow it to pass. In so doing, they handed American imperialism political backing for its war of annihilation against Iran. In a miserable face-saving exercise, Russia tabled a second resolution, which it knew would never pass, calling for an end to the war and a diplomatic solution. Only four out of 15 members could bring themselves to support it.
This pathetic performance flows from the social nature and interests of these two capitalist regimes. Despite NATO’s systematic encirclement of the country and provocation of the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin still believes that a compromise with Washington that recognizes the Russian oligarchy’s “right” to exploit its own working class and control a sphere of influence is possible.
By backing Washington’s demolition of Iran and the plundering of its resources, the Kremlin, operating on the old Stalinist mantra of “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism, hopes it can cut a deal on Ukraine and US investment with Trump.
As for the Chinese government headed by Xi Jinping, a major consideration in the immediate term is Trump’s impending visit to Beijing at the end of this month. In order to maintain the prospect of Chinese capitalism securing an economic arrangement with the US, the Stalinist regime is more than willing to provide a diplomatic victory to the war criminal Trump and at the expense of its ostensible ally, Iran.
But the fantasies shared by the ruling cliques in Beijing and Moscow are incompatible with the imperatives of American imperialism. A new partition of the globe and its resources among the major powers is well underway, and the US is not about to peacefully accept any challenge to its hegemonic position. On the contrary, Washington is sending a message to Beijing and Moscow that they are next on the hit list.
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All of the imperialist powers have today cast aside any remaining restraints imposed by international law and diplomacy following the horrors of the Second World War. As the World Socialist Web Site explained over two years ago, “All the ‘red lines’ that demarcate civilization from barbarism are being effaced.” The war of annihilation against Iran, which with Wednesday’s vote now has received a stamp of approval from over 140 governments through their co-sponsoring of Resolution 2817, was preceded by Israel’s imperialist-backed genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. This slaughter was backed by the imperialist powers in North America and Europe, who not only supplied the Zionist butchers with weaponry but systematically suppressed all forms of opposition to genocide at home.
Trump, at the head of the world’s most powerful imperialist state, gives the most grotesque and repulsive expression to imperialist barbarism. His wars of aggression abroad go hand in hand with his operation to establish a fascist dictatorship at home.
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The belief of government officials in Moscow and Beijing that one can avert imperialist world war by means of clever diplomacy and a “multipolar” capitalist development by rebalancing relations between competing nation states is delusional.
Over 30 years ago, leading Stalinist bureaucrats convinced themselves that if only they dissolved the Soviet Union and restored capitalism, the imperialists would welcome them into the circle of great powers and the world capitalist market with open arms. Then as now, their national schemes for capitalist development collide with the objective contradiction of world capitalism between the globalized economy and the division of the world into nation-states—a contradiction that is driving the great powers into a third world war.
4. The tense, explosive conditions in which the 2026 Academy Awards are being held
The most important work up for an award is The Voice of Hind Rajab, directed by Tunisia’s Kaouther Ben Hania, about the Israeli military’s cold-blooded murder of a five-year-old girl in Gaza in January 2024. The Zionist lobby did everything in its power to prevent distribution of the film in the US. Deadline noted in October 2025:
A timely subject, rave reviews (97% on Rotten Tomatoes), festival accolades, an acclaimed director, the longest ever festival ovation, and a host of A-list supporters would normally all-but guarantee a movie U.S. distribution. Plenty of films this year have found a home with less in their corners. And yet, The Voice of Hind Rajab, the Venice Film Festival Silver Lion winner directed by two-time Oscar nominee Kaouther Ben Hania, remains without a U.S. home…
One leading U.S. buyer, who expressed strong interest in the film, claimed: “Buyers are passing out of fear and/or they disagree with the film’s politics. I am very surprised.”
The Voice of Hind Rajab finally found a distributor in December and was given a limited American release. Thousands of actors, writers and others worldwide have conveyed their horror at the genocide in Gaza and the conduct of their governments in justifying and sustaining the mass murder. The victory of No Other Land, also in the face of fierce pro-Israel opposition, in the best feature documentary category a year ago, was an expression of this powerful sentiment.
This year’s Academy Awards ceremony takes place under extraordinary political and social global conditions. First and foremost, the Trump-Hegseth administration and its fascist allies in the Netanyahu regime have launched a war of extermination against an oppressed country, a conflict aimed at obliterating Iranian society. This is one of the most infamous political-military actions of our time, a “crime against peace,” as defined by the anti-Nazi Nuremberg Trials, a war of aggression against a nation that represented no threat whatsoever to the United States.
The prosecution of this illegal, bloody massacre has only been possible because of the complicity of Democratic Party scoundrels/accomplices and the American media, which lies with every breath that its leading pundits and spokespeople take. The onslaught began, fittingly, with a dastardly attack on an elementary school, murdering more than 150 small girls. This is contemporary bourgeois society, “wading in blood, dripping filth,” in Rosa Luxemburg’s phrase.
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Absurdly, the only impact of the Iran war permitted to filter through the media is the report that the FBI and Los Angeles Police Department have “significantly increased security” at the Dolby Theatre following an alert regarding a “potential retaliatory drone threat” from Iran targeting the West Coast. One can only shake one’s head in disgust. The US and Israeli military barbarians are in the process of reducing Tehran to a heap of rubble, with thousands already dead, but the American authorities’ principal concern is to frighten people about a “drone threat” that has a reality only in the workings of the police mind.
The war and the general crisis of US society are combining to produce economic disaster for broad layers of the population. The price of gas and every other necessity is on the rise, including housing and cars, but for the billionaires life has never been sweeter. It will surprise no one, but the obscene accumulation of private wealth at the top of the entertainment industry continues unabated despite (or because of) the 17,000 layoffs in the field, and the tens of thousands of more job losses to come through the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger and the increasing introduction of AI.
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What are the various unions doing to answer this wholesale attack on jobs and living standards?
They have concentrated on obtaining the entirely meaningless right to grant or withhold “consent” to the use of a performer’s features or voice. As though the cutthroat conglomerates will be blocked from saving tens of millions or even billions of dollars by a few promises on paper! In any event, only the top strata of actors or other performers are in a position to withhold “consent.” For everyone else, proving a hindrance to the AI plans of the studios will most likely mean the end of a career.
The other “strategy” pursued by the unions has been to line up with the giant corporations in efforts to “keep jobs in L.A.,” a hopeless and parochial enterprise, which only weakens and divides the workforce.
SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild contracts are once again expiring, on June 30 and May 1, respectively. After lengthy militant strikes in 2023, which were ultimately betrayed by the union officialdoms, the unions will do all that they can to avoid strikes this year. Nothing will change for the better until rank-and-file writers, actors, technicians, directors and others begin to take matters into their hands and declare war on the corporate stranglehold and the financial oligarchy.
[Media moguls] Ellison, Sarandos, Iger and company are nothing but a millstone around the neck of film production and cultural life. Much of what these parasites produce is rubbish and actually damages popular consciousness. The gap between what is technically possible and artistically valuable, on the one hand, and what is currently turned out becomes increasingly glaring and painful. There is no future for meaningful filmmaking and television under the profit system. The latter can only continue to exist by ridding itself of or impoverishing artists and film workers, censoring opposition and continuing to empty productions of serious content to the greatest extent possible.
However, the needs and concerns and increasingly, the thinking and feeling, of workers and artists lead in a diametrically opposed direction. That general trend is to the left, to protest, to resistance, to rejection of the entire rotten capitalist order. That trend may only shakily or very partially find reflection in the nominated films, much less in the final Academy voting, but it is the current with the greatest significance for the future of cultural and political life. It will persist and deepen whatever the outcome on Sunday.
5. Treasury Secretary Bessent says US will escort ships through Strait of Hormuz as Iran war spirals
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday that the US Navy will begin escorting commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz—a major escalation that would place US warships directly in the line of Iranian fire with a high likelihood of casualties.
“As soon as it is militarily possible, the US Navy, perhaps with an international coalition, will be escorting vessels through,” Bessent told Sky News.
The US-Israeli war on Iran, now in its thirteenth day, has triggered a cascading regional crisis centered on the Strait of Hormuz—the waterway through which 20 percent of the world’s oil passes. Iran effectively closed the strait within days of the war’s outbreak on February 28, ordering over 150 tankers to anchor and declaring that “not one litre of oil” would pass. Tanker traffic has dropped 70 percent. On Wednesday, Iran’s newly appointed Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei issued his first public statement, vowing to keep the strait closed and open new fronts. Iranian drone boats and missiles have struck multiple commercial vessels—six on Wednesday alone—and CNN reported on March 10 that Iran has begun laying mines in the waterway.
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The Hill reported on Thursday that naval experts warn the escort mission would be extraordinarily dangerous. Bryan Clark, an expert in naval operations with the Hudson Institute, explained the core problem: “The challenge is going to be dealing with the proximity of the drone launchers and the missile launchers that are going to be along the Iranian coast.” He added: “The issue is that you only have a couple of minutes once the launcher comes out before the missiles are going to get on top of you, because you’re only talking about 3 or 4 miles from the shoreline to the transit lane.” The strait is just 21 miles wide at its narrowest point.
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As the war grinds on with no clear end in sight, sections of the ruling class are now openly agitating for the deployment of US ground troops. The Wall Street Journal warned on Thursday that ending the war prematurely would be a strategic disaster. “This is the danger Mr. Trump faces as he contemplates when to end the war,” the Journal wrote. “Iran has threatened Gulf oil production for decades, and that potential threat has built a risk premium into the oil price. But if the war ends with that threat having been proven in practice, with the U.S. unable to do anything about it, the U.S. will be the strategic loser.”
The Journal argued that the war’s original aims—eliminating Iran’s missile threat, its nuclear program, and its navy—are no longer sufficient. “Iran’s counterpunch means that reopening the Strait and reducing Iran’s veto power over its traffic will now have to be a goal. As a conflict evolves, war aims have to change as well.” This, the Journal continued, “may mean a longer campaign than Mr. Trump initially anticipated as the U.S. and Israel secure the area of the Strait and increase the target list to include more of Iran’s drone units and individual IRGC and basij units.”
The editorial went further, calling for the seizure of Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal: “It may also require taking control of Iran’s main oil export terminal at Kharg island ... Iran’s oil sales to China continue to sustain the regime.” Trump, the Journal noted, “has been careful not to rule out deploying special forces for discrete and vital missions, and perhaps he has had Kharg in mind.” Its conclusion: “Winning now includes reopening the Strait of Hormuz.”
In other words, the most influential mouthpiece of American finance capital is demanding an expansion of the war—ground troops, the seizure of sovereign territory, and an open-ended military occupation of the world’s most critical energy chokepoint. The administration has not ruled out conscription. Asked about a military draft on Fox News on March 8, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said it is “not part of the current plan right now, but the president, again, wisely keeps his options on the table.”
Meanwhile, the bombing of Iran continues to intensify. Bessent announced on Fox Business last week that the US would carry out “our biggest bombing campaign” yet. The US has struck over 5,000 targets since February 28. Over 1,348 Iranian civilians have been killed, including hundreds of children. At least 12,000 have been wounded. The UNHCR reports 3.2 million Iranians have been internally displaced. Israeli officials privately assess the regime is unlikely to fall soon, with Netanyahu conceding uncertainty on regime change.
The war has simultaneously expanded into Lebanon, where Israel launched an intensive bombing campaign and ground incursion after Hezbollah resumed fire on March 2.
Israeli forces have pushed into southern Lebanon along several fronts, establishing at least 18 military positions inside Lebanese territory—the first ground operations since the November 2024 ceasefire. Israeli strikes hit central Beirut on Wednesday, one kilometer from the government headquarters. Over 680 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 98 children, and more than 800,000 displaced. Israel’s military chief said the campaign “will not be short.” Defense Minister Katz ordered preparations to expand the ground offensive on Wednesday.
Canada’s Liberal government is continuing to uphold the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States, even as the Trump administration eviscerates the rights of immigrants and refugees and unleashes Gestapo-style ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) thugs against them.
Over the past year, calls from refugee and immigrant-rights groups and from lawyers specializing in immigration law for Ottawa to abrogate the agreement have grown ever more urgent.
Under the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), Ottawa has for more than two decades systematically turned over to US authorities refugee claimants who crossed into Canada from south of the border via land, on the grounds that the US is a “safe third country” where asylum claims are adjudicated humanely and according to international refugee law.
In March 2023, the Trudeau Liberal government and the Biden administration declared that the STCA covers the entire, more than 3,000-mile Canada-US border, not just designated border crossings. They thereby closed a “loophole” in the agreement that had allowed tens of thousands of people fleeing persecution and poverty to find refuge in Canada by crossing into the country “irregularly.”
Since returning to office in January 2025, Trump has launched sweeping raids against immigrants in major US cities, as part of his drive to establish a fascist presidential dictatorship in Washington. Criticism of Ottawa’s enforcement of the STCA agreement gained strength after revelations emerged throughout 2025 about mass round-ups of Venezuelans and other Latin American immigrants, who were confined to horrific conditions in concentration camps in the US and El Salvador. Then, in January 2026, the shootings by ICE thugs, first of Rene Nicole Good and Alex Pretti two weeks later, prompted a groundswell of opposition in the US and further criticism of the Canadian government’s stance.
Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has fully endorsed American imperialism’s criminal war of aggression against Iran and is seeking to negotiate a new trade agreement with Trump to secure Canadian imperialism’s position as Washington’s junior partner, is overseeing a tightening of Canada’s immigration policy. In a sop to Trump, his government greatly strengthened the presence of security forces along the Canada-US border early last year under the pretext of combatting drug smuggling.
Moreover, the Carney government and its predecessor under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have dramatically slashed immigration caps and embraced the far-right narrative on the supposed threats posed by mass migration. His government is also pushing Bill C-12 through Parliament, which restricts even further the ability of refugees to claim asylum in Canada.
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Bill C-12 (Strengthening Canada’s Immigration System and Borders Act), presented to Parliament by the Liberal government in October 2025, aims to restrict immigration and toughen the rules governing asylum claims. The bill proposes reactionary amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that will be especially harmful to sections of the working class attempting to escape political persecution or dire poverty. Critics have warned that many of the bill’s new provisions are anti-democratic, violate the principle of nonrefoulement and deny fair hearings. C-12 is due for approval by the Senate, Canada’s upper chamber of Parliament, this week.
The new bill gives the immigration minister sweeping, unchecked power to cancel or suspend claims for entire categories of people without notice or oversight. It allows the government to bypass individual reviews and make immigration and asylum decisions based on a vaguely defined “public interest.” Another provision of the bill is the imposition of a one-year time limit for making a refugee claim after arriving in Canada. Given that it applies retroactively, this provision will invariably force individuals who missed the new abitrary deadline back to unsafe conditions. The legislation permits—and in certain cases requires—the exchange of personal and sensitive information among federal, provincial and foreign agencies, posing risks to the safety of migrants and refugees.
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In 2017, the Canadian Council for Refugees, Amnesty International and the Canadian Council of Churches launched a legal action in the Federal Court, challenging the claim that the US is a safe country for asylum seekers. They also issued a public brief detailing how the US asylum system falls short of international and Canadian legal standards.
In July 2020, the Federal Court ruled the STCA invalid, finding it violated asylum seekers’ rights under Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (right to life, liberty, and security). The government appealed the ruling. In April 2021, the Federal Court of Appeal overturned the 2020 decision and upheld the STCA. The Supreme Court of Canada subsequently upheld the constitutionality of the STCA in June 2023.
But Trump’s drive towards dictatorship in the US is now so far advanced, and Canada’s complicity in its anti-immigrant witch hunt so blatant, that a handful of voices within the political establishment have been raised against the maintenance of the STCA. The warnings made by the likes of former Liberal Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy and right-wing Globe and Mail commentator Conrad Yakabuski have nothing to do with a principled defence of democratic rights. Instead, they revolve around the concern that Canadian imperialism, which has repeatedly deployed “human rights” justifications to legitimize its aggressive actions around the world, could lose what remains of its credibility with its complicity in Trump’s crimes.
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The fact of the matter is that Canada’s ruling class is not merely complicit in the destruction of democratic rights for refugees and the working class as a whole in the United States. At home too, successive governments have gutted democratic and worker rights, including the right to strike. Beginning under Trudeau, the Liberals have fully embraced the far-right narrative about the alleged economic burden of immigration, leading to steep cuts in immigration quotas. When mass protests erupted across the country against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, which Ottawa backs to the hilt, authorities from the federal government on down demonized anti-genocide demonstrators as “antisemites” and sought to silence them. A succession of strikes, including by dockers, postal workers, Air Canada workers and rail workers, have been criminalized unilaterally by government ministers through the invocation of anti-democratic provisions in the Canada Labour Code.
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Attacks on the democratic rights of immigrants in Canada and the US harm the entire working class. As a general rule, immigrants are one of the most vulnerable and exploited sections of the working class. The anti-democratic laws and institutions aimed against migrants today will be used to crack down on the entire working class tomorrow. For this reason, workers must not be under any illusions that the more liberal sections of the ruling class will fight their battles. Under current social and economic conditions, the fight for democratic rights inevitably becomes a fight for socialism. This implies a fight for class consciousness and the unity of all workers, regardless of the national borders dividing them, in a common struggle for social equality and quality public services for all, and against war and oligarchy.
7. Kazakhstan demolishes historic site where Trotsky once lived
The two-storey Zhetysu House at 45 Gogol Street is also known among the population as ‘Trotsky’s House’. It was built in 1908, when today’s metropolis of Almaty (then still called ‘Verny’) had a population of just 37,000. In addition to Trotsky, various other important figures also stayed in the house, such as the Soviet-Kazakh composer Yevgeny Brusilovsky, who composed the first Kazakh opera and wrote the anthem of the Kazakh SSR, the Soviet composer Sergei Prokofiev and the botanist Nikolai Vavilov.
Trotsky himself was exiled to Almaty (then Alma-Ata) in January 1928. His exile was the culmination of the bitter factional struggle between the leadership of the Soviet Communist Party under Joseph Stalin and the Left Opposition, led by Leon Trotsky.
The struggle was about nothing less than the survival of the Marxist and socialist movement. Due to the international isolation of the October Revolution of 1917, a privileged bureaucracy had developed within the workers’ state that was increasingly hostile to the socialist revolution. This social and political attitude was openly expressed in the theory of “socialism in one country,” formulated by Joseph Stalin and Nikolai Bukharin in late 1924, with which they rejected the program of socialist world revolution.
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Trotsky’s exile to Kazakhstan was intended to isolate him politically. At the time, Alma-Ata was a small remote village, almost 4,000 kilometres away from Moscow. In winter, temperatures regularly reached -20 °C. Malaria and other diseases were widespread and also severely affected Trotsky himself and his wife, Natalya Sedova. At the same time, medical care and food supplies were very poor. Electricity and water supplies were also limited.
But even under these conditions, Trotsky continued the struggle. In exile, he maintained extensive correspondence with oppositionists throughout the Soviet Union and wrote several key works. Of particular importance were his critique of the Comintern program in 1928 and his polemic against Karl Radek on the question of permanent revolution, which clarified the political and theoretical foundations of the International Left Opposition.
8. Hands off Iran! – Rally against the Iran war in Frankfurt-Main
Around a thousand participants gathered in Frankfurt’s Römerberg square last Sunday for a rally under the slogan “Hands off Iran—stop US-Israeli aggression.”
The rally was organized by the Islamic Religious Community of Hesse (IRH), supported by the Peace and Future Workshop Frankfurt am Main led by Willy van Ooyen, a leading member of the Left Party. The Peace and Future Workshop acts as a kind of political fig leaf for the policies of the Left Party in Hesse. But neither the Left Party in the state of Hesse nor any trade union officially joined the call for the rally.
On the contrary, there were fierce attempts to ban the rally beforehand. In particular, Hesse's antisemitism commissioner Uwe Becker (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) and Frankfurt's mayor Nargess Eskandari-Grünberg (Greens) strongly condemned it.
They both claimed it “glorified the mullah regime” and spread “antisemitism.” In the end, the Frankfurt Public Order Office did allow the rally to take place, as it clearly posed “no threat to public safety.”
Hundreds of Iranian, Palestinian and Muslim workers from the Rhine-Main region and beyond gathered on the Römerberg, many with their families. Both supporters and opponents of the Tehran government were clearly represented.
Some held photos of the children killed at the girls’ school in Minab, where on the first day of the war at least 168 people, including mainly schoolgirls aged seven to twelve, 26 teachers and four parents, were killed in a US attack. One sign read (in keeping with International Women’s Day on 8 March): “For women's rights – but they are bombing a girls’ school!”
According to figures from the Iranian Red Crescent, which were discussed on the same day, 8 March, in a webinar organised by the International Committee of the Fourth International, more than 6,000 civilian facilities had already been destroyed or damaged in Iran on that day, including 5,535 residential buildings, 64 schools and 14 hospitals and medical facilities; and more than 1,300 people had already been killed in the war.
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Many spontaneously agreed with the demands on the flyers of the World Socialist Web Site: “For the building of an international, socialist anti-war movement of the working class.” One woman said: “The Berlin parties have all accepted the genocide and supported the so-called ‘reasons of state’ [pro-Israel], even the Left Party! That disappointed me greatly.”
The speakers on the podium, however, had no viable perspective to offer. Similar to the London rally the day before, they simply appealed to the world’s ruling politicians, without believing in the success of their appeals themselves.
The ruling class is recklessly heading toward a Third World War. Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who only after the start of the Iran war in Washington kissed Donald Trump’s “ring” and assured him of German support, is pursuing a policy of massive rearmament with his coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party SPD, which will have to be paid for by the workers. The Left Party also supports this course, including the regime change operation in Iran, which it only wants to achieve by other means.
This ever-expanding war front proves that appeals to the ruling class, as presented on the stage of the demonstration, will achieve nothing. It is time, as the World Socialist Web Site has demanded, to build an international, socialist anti-war movement in the working class that is directed against capitalism.
9. Australian unions silent on Labor-backed US-Israel war on Iran
Not a single union has opposed the Australian state’s role in the illegal war, let alone called for industrial action to halt the supply of war materials.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched a frontal attack on the recently formed union of research fellows at its campuses. On Monday, March 2, the NIH leadership announced it will no longer recognize NIH Fellows United–UAW and will seek to have the bargaining unit decertified.
According to reporting by NOTUS (News of the United States) and subsequent coverage, NIH leaders informed the union that fellows “should never have been certified,” claiming that trainees in the affected programs are not “employees” under federal labor law and therefore lack the right to organize.
The United Auto Workers-aligned NIH Fellows United union was formed in late 2023 in response to chronically low pay, precarious appointments and lack of voice over working conditions for early‑career scientists. With 5,375 members, it is one of the largest federal government unions to have formed in more than a decade.
The move reprises similar objections the NIH leadership raised in 2023 as the union was being formed. In fact, NIH fellows conduct experiments, write papers and carry out large portions of the day‑to‑day research on which the agency’s scientific output depends. To claim that these workers, whose productivity NIH relies on for billions of dollars in grants and prestige, are not “employees” is an attempt to turn back the clock on the most elementary rights of the scientific workforce. The Federal Labor Relations Authority subsequently confirmed their status as employees when it recognized the workers’ right to collectively bargain in 2023.
Union representatives have condemned the move as an illegal voiding of the existing contract and have pledged to fight it. NIH Fellows United and the UAW apparatus have said they are “moving on every available front—legal, political, and most importantly, through the organized power of our membership—to defend our rights.” In practice, however, the UAW apparatus has limited itself to statements and legalistic appeals and has opposed any serious mobilization of the working class to defend the NIH fellows.
In fact, UAW President Shawn Fain and the rest of the union apparatus have done everything possible to shore up the “home front” for Trump as the fascist cabal in the White House launches its illegal war against Iran. Fain has issued no statements opposing the slaughter of Iranian people. At the same time, the UAW bureaucracy has ignored the overwhelming vote for a strike by 40,000 University of California academic workers and kept them on the job nearly two weeks after the expiration of their contract.
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Responding to the attack on NIH workers, Will Lehman, a Pennsylvania Mack Trucks worker and a socialist who is currently running against Fain for UAW president, issued the following statement:
The domestic counterpart of Trump’s illegal war against the Iranian people is an intensifying war on workers’ living standards at home—through layoffs, austerity and the destruction of basic democratic rights. The union-busting attack on the NIH fellows’ union is one expression of Trump’s war against the “enemy within,” that is, the working class.
It is also part of the ongoing war against science, overseen by Trump’s quack-in-chief Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is systematically dismantling public health protections, including vaccinations, even as COVID-19 continues to spread throughout the population, and there are new outbreaks of measles and other diseases.
I call on all UAW members and all workers to rally to the defense of the NIH workers and build rank-and-file committees at federal government and other workplaces to prepare collective action, including a general strike, to defend the jobs and rights of all workers, including the right to organize.
The Trump administration has already gutted the collective bargaining rights of workers at the Veterans Administration and other government agencies as part of its plans to privatize federal agencies and purge the civil service of any worker not loyal to the fascist regime.
NIH workers cannot wait for the UAW bureaucracy to take action. If Fain and the UAW apparatus raise this issue at all, it is only from the standpoint of defending their flow of dues money and institutional positions. The last thing the UAW bureaucracy wants is an all-out fight against Trump and his Democratic Party enablers because this would undermine the governmental support it receives in exchange for policing the working class.
But an all-out fight is exactly what is needed to defend our jobs, public health and democratic rights. It is the only way to stop the ever-expanding war in the Middle East and the war against the working class at home.
The attack on NIH Fellows United is part of the Trump administration’s offensive against federal workers. In August 2025, the Department of Veterans Affairs announced the termination of collective bargaining agreements for most bargaining unit employees, including some 16,000 nurses represented by National Nurses United at 23 facilities. That move was denounced by nurses as a blatant attempt to bust unions and silence opposition to the dismantling and privatization of the VA.
Similar measures have targeted other federal bargaining units, and Trump is now moving to gut protections across the civil service through regulatory changes. On March 5, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) unveiled a proposed rule to “streamline” federal layoffs by prioritizing performance evaluations over seniority in reduction‑in‑force (RIF) procedures.
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Administration officials have boasted that there are “opportunities to reshape” agencies this year through staff reductions and selective hiring. The combined effect is to intimidate existing workers, purge dissenters and repopulate the state apparatus with political operatives.
In this context, NIH’s claim that fellows are not “employees” acquires its full political meaning. It is an attempt to carve out a large, strategically important layer of scientists from labor protections so that they can be more easily controlled, exploited and disciplined. That the target is a group of early career researchers, many of them immigrants and international scholars, is no accident.
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The attempt to break the NIH fellows’ union represents a new stage in the Trump administration’s attack on scientific truth and its embrace of mass infection, climate denial and the subordination of research to nationalist and corporate imperatives. By stripping fellows of the right to organize and subjecting them to arbitrary managerial power, the NIH leadership seeks to create a more compliant, intimidated and disposable layer of scientists.
The attack on the NIH Fellows United gives new meaning to the World Socialist Web Site’s previous statements declaring that “the fight to defend science and public health … is a fight against capitalism and for the political mobilization of the international working class on a socialist program.”
11. Oil price gyrations bring significant financial losses
The wild swings in the oil price at the start of this week have directed attention to one of the most significant potential consequences of US-led war on Iran—a major financial crisis induced by losses flowing from the oil market.
The turmoil is certain to increase as the International Energy Agency has characterized the crisis as “unprecedented” while others have said the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is “the big one” that everyone has feared.
On Sunday and Monday in the course of a few hours, the price of Brent crude, one of the global benchmarks, went from $89 per barrel to $120 per barrel when the trading day opened on Monday in the US before coming down again on the back of Trump’s remarks that the war would end “very soon.”
Describing the situation, the Financial Times (FT) said the hike in Asia sparked “alarm” among administration officials who “rushed to evaluate policy options to temper panicky trading.”
“One person familiar with the discussion on Monday morning said officials confronted ‘panic’ in the markets with ‘all options on the table,’” the report said.
The panic did not flow from the effects of the price hike on inflation or the immediate impact on gasoline prices at the pump but from the nature of the oil market. Like other major commodity markets in modern-day financialized capitalism, it does not consist of traders dealing in physical quantities of oil.
It is a financial market in which traders, investors and speculators deal in contracts rather than actual shipments of oil and never see a barrel of oil. It is estimated that in a single day only about 5 percent of futures contracts actually reach physical delivery. In this arcane system of financial deals, swaps, derivatives of various forms and futures contracts there are large profits to be made as well as major losses if bets go the wrong way.
And because so much of this trading and speculation is based on borrowed money from banks and hedge funds—financial leverage which juices returns but which can also lead to major losses—a crisis in the oil market reaches into the financial system as a whole.
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Some figures on the extent of the losses so far are now starting to come in. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported earlier this week that what it called “some of the world’s savviest investors” have suffered billion-dollar losses because of the gyrations of the oil market.
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These losses did not specifically flow from the gyrations earlier this week—those have yet to be recorded—but from the shift in the overall financial outlook flowing from the war.
As the WSJ article put it: “The losses underscore the extent to which the conflict in Iran has upended perceived wisdom in the bond markets. Going into this year investors had expected inflation to continue to moderate, and for some central banks to keep cutting interest rates. Bond yields around the world trended lower.”
But the surge in oil prices “turned those expectations on their head” as bond yields have started to rise—bonds are falling in price—and the expectation is that central banks will not cut rates but may start to raise them.
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A significant feature of the losses in the US, thus far, is that they were incurred by funds which sought to avoid risky bets, to go for “base hits, not home runs” and adopt a so-called market-neutral approach in which they were able to benefit from both rising and falling markets.
The hedge funds and traders may be in the front line but behind them stand the banks. They have not yet incurred large losses, but they are exposed because of their lending to hedge funds. Those involved include some of the biggest names in the banking world such as JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America.
The turmoil is not confined to oil but is extending to other commodities, especially in agriculture because of the impact on fertilizer supplies and prices, where markets are similarly financialized. There are reports that major commodity trading firms, including Vitol, Trafigura and Gunvor are arranging additional credit lines from banks to guard against financial pressures arising from further escalations in the oil prices.
And while it is impossible to predict the exact course of events, there are indications that objective forces, far more powerful than the words of Trump aimed at trying to calm the market, are at work.
Earlier this week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) organized the largest release of oil reserves in its history in response to the crisis—a total of 400 million barrels far in excess of the 182 million it released following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Announcing the decision, IEA executive director Fatih Birol said: “The oil market challenges we are facing are unprecedented in scale.”
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In a comment piece published in the FT this week, Amrita Sen, the head of the oil market intelligence firm Energy Aspects gave short shrift to Trump’s assertion that the war would end soon and the oil market would get back to normal.
“That seems far-fetched,” she wrote. “We are in the midst of one of the biggest supply disruptions in the history of the energy market—an event the industry has feared for 40 years. And yet, now that it is here, no one seems prepared.”
12. VW Group increases job cuts to 50,000 to boost profits
Volkswagen Group CEO Oliver Blume presented the business figures for the past year at the corporation’s annual press conference on Tuesday and announced an intensification of the automaker’s ongoing jobs massacre. The chair of the general and group works council at VW, Daniela Cavallo, immediately promised him the support of the trade union apparatus.
In a communication to shareholders, Blume announced that 50,000 jobs would be cut in Germany alone, including 35,000 jobs at the core VW brand, 7,500 at Audi, 1,900 at Porsche and 1,600 at the software subsidiary Cariad.
Around three weeks ago, Manager Magazin had already reported that costs across the entire group would be reduced by 20 percent by the end of 2028, equating to annual cutbacks of €60 billion (US$69.1 billion). The closure of entire plants is also reportedly planned.
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In addition to the massive cutbacks, to which many thousands more jobs and possibly entire plants will fall victim, the rate of return is also to be increased through close cooperation with the armaments industry. Porsche SE, the holding company of the Porsche and Piëch families, had already announced in the summer of last year that it would enter the armaments sector. First, an investment platform for defence tech start-ups (satellites, drones, cybersecurity) is to be built up, in which the holding company later intends to directly participate with €500 million.
At VW sites such as Dresden or Osnabrück, where the production of civilian vehicles has been phased out or will be phased out next year, negotiations with the armaments industry are in full swing. Only recently, developers in Osnabrück presented two prototypes for military vehicles based on the Amarok and Crafter models. Truck subsidiary MAN is also in close contact with Germany’s second-largest armaments corporation, Rheinmetall.
Volkswagen would thus return to its old traditions. VW was founded in 1937 by the Nazi regime—not only for the KdF “Volkswagen” but primarily as an armaments company. Only a few hundred KdF cars were built in Wolfsburg, but tens of thousands of military vehicles, mines and rockets were produced by 20,000 forced laborers. The profiteers then as now were the Porsche and Piëch families.
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The campaign currently being waged by autoworker Will Lehman in the US in the United Auto Workers (UAW) union is of great importance and very instructive in this regard. Lehman is running for the office of UAW President, who is elected by the membership. He advocates the abolition of the trade union apparatus and the transfer of power to the workers on the shop floor. To this end, he campaigns for the building of a network of rank-and-file committees, rejects class collaboration with the corporations and fights against the nationalism that incites workers of different countries against each other.
Lehman pursues the goal of mobilizing the economic power of the workers and combining the defense of jobs with the struggle against militarism and war. Lehman’s campaign has already met with a great response and is supported by workers from various industries and countries.
13. Workers and students in Sri Lanka denounce US-Israeli war against Iran
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka have spoken to workers and university students about the implications of the criminal US-Israeli war against Iran and the urgent need to build an anti-war movement based on international socialism.
The brutal US-Israeli war of extermination, now in its second week, is aimed at subjugating Iran and placing its resources under Washington’s domination. The indiscriminate attacks have devastated the country, killing over 1,000 people and destroying basic infrastructure.
Sri Lanka’s Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government has not condemned the war, effectively signalling its support for Washington’s actions. As the war spreads across the Middle East, oil and gas prices are rapidly rising around the world.
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During their discussions, SEP/IYSSE campaigners explained that the military attack on Iran could not be stopped by appealing to the imperialist powers. The first task of the working class, they explained, is to understand the character of the war itself. Modern wars are not accidents or the result of the policies of this or that government but arise from the crisis of the capitalist system and the struggle of rival imperialist powers for markets, resources and strategic dominance.
The historical experience of the twentieth century demonstrates that war can be stopped only through the revolutionary intervention of the working class. As the producers of society’s wealth, workers possess the collective power to disrupt war economies through strikes and mass action. United internationally and politically independent from capitalist parties and unions, they can overthrow the pro-war capitalist system and reorganize society on socialist foundations.
Today, as the danger of a third world war rapidly intensifies, the working class confronts the same historic alternative: socialism or barbarism. Against the pro-war ruling elites, their fascistic allies, and the pseudo-left and pacifist forces that promote illusions in the capitalist system, the working class must take up the fight to abolish the source of war itself—capitalism. As the International Committee of the Fourth International insists, there can be no genuine struggle against war without the fight for socialism, and no socialist movement that does not oppose imperialist war.
SEP/IYSSE campaigners urged all those they spoke with to attend the SEP–IYSSE public meeting on March 17 at 4 p.m. at the Colombo Public Library to discuss the geo-strategic factors driving the US-Israeli war and how to develop an international socialist anti-war movement of workers, youth, and intellectuals to fight it.
14. Terrorism charges brought against teens who targeted fascist protest with homemade bombs
Two Pennsylvania teenagers were charged in federal court on Monday for allegedly attempting to use homemade explosives against a group of fascist provocateurs rallying in New York City on Saturday. The devices failed to detonate and caused no injuries.
The two accused, Emir Balat, 18, and Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, face charges of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization and use of a weapon of mass destruction, among other charges. If convicted, they could potentially face life sentences.
The incident occurred during a provocation organized by January 6 foot-soldier Jake Lang. Lang’s group of around 20 fascists demonstrated in front of Gracie Mansion, the official residence of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, under the banner, “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City.” Lang has gleefully cheered the killing of Iranians in Trump’s criminal war, called for the US to incinerate Muslims with nuclear weapons, and for the military to be deployed against Mayor Mamdani.
The right-wing agitators, vastly outnumbered by a group of counter-protesters, deliberately set out to stoke violence. At least one of them, Ian McGinnis, was arrested for pepper-spraying counter-protesters.
According to the federal complaint released Monday, at approximately 12:15 p.m., Balat lit one of the improvised devices and threw it into the crowd. He received a second device from Kayumi, which he subsequently dropped and attempted to run away from police officers.
Both Balat and Kayumi were arrested on the scene. The devices, according to the complaint, were about the size of a mason jar, wrapped in duct tape, and contained a fuse, nuts and bolts. A preliminary test on one of the devices turned up positive for the explosive TATP.
The complaint also alleges that both waived their Miranda rights upon arrest, with Balat writing that he pledged allegiance to ISIS and Kayumi saying that he was inspired in part by ISIS. The complaint does not allege that either one had any direct contact with the organization, nor that it was part of any organized bombing campaign.
The US government’s charges of “terrorism” and “use of a weapon of mass destruction” come as the Trump administration is escalating its war of extermination against Iran, a country of 90 million people. In contrast to the “mass destruction” posed by the mason jar explosive, the US and its partner, Israel, have dropped thousands of bombs on military and civilian infrastructure throughout the country, bombs like the 1,500-kilogram Tomahawk cruise missile that incinerated a girl’s school in Minab, killing at least 165 on the first day of the illegal war. Trump has vowed a surge in the destruction, and the administration declared it will not be bound by any legal or humanitarian constraints.
The US population is deeply hostile to the war, with opinion polls showing the lowest support at the start of any major US conflict. Under these conditions, the eagerness of the government to invoke “terrorism” serves a definite political purpose—to counteract the war’s massive unpopularity by whipping up anti-Muslim chauvinism. Trump has staffed his “Department of War” with Christian nationalists like Pete Hegseth, who see the imperialist bloodbath in Iran as part of a holy war. That the Iranian government has no connections with and is bitterly hostile to ISIS matters little, for they are presented as a monolithic “radical Islam.”
Little is currently known about Balat and Kayumi, and the possible involvement of state forces to encourage or organize the failed bombing cannot be ruled out. The FBI and New York Police Department have a long and sordid history of concocting terror schemes, attempting to radicalize targets, exploiting the mentally ill, and in some cases even offering to pay suspects hundreds of thousands of dollars to agree to commit terrorism. The involvement of Jake Lang, who was pardoned by Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 coup attempt, raises further questions about the possible involvement of the state.
Regardless, the incident is already being used to shift politics further to the right....
15. Workers at occupied plant in Matamoros, Mexico denounce being hung out to dry by “independent” union
Six weeks have passed since First Brands abruptly shut six maquiladora plants in northern Mexico and threw more than 5,000 workers in Matamoros, Ciudad Juárez and Mexicali into the street without salaries or severance pay.
About 1,200 at the Tridonex-Cardone plant in Matamoros continue to occupy the plant, but are being left to starve on the picket line, underscoring the urgent need for an international, rank‑and‑file fight by autoworkers across North America.
From the beginning, the World Socialist Web Site has stressed that this fight can be won only through an international strategy uniting First Brands workers with other autoworkers across North America and beyond, against a transnational jobs massacre. With major North American brake and auto parts suppliers being shut down overnight, this struggle has vast, international implications for workers on both sides of the US‑Mexico border.
On January 28, First Brands announced an “orderly, accelerated shutdown” of major North American operations, including Brake Parts Inc., Cardone and AutoLite, after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2025 and warning that up to 13,000 jobs worldwide could be destroyed.
That same night, workers in Matamoros, Ciudad Juárez and Mexicali independently launched plant occupations to stop machinery from being removed, declaring in Matamoros that “no machines will leave the building.”
Today, those initial occupations have been wound down in Ciudad Juárez and Mexicali, thanks above all to the intervention of the “independent” union bureaucracy and local authorities, while Tridonex workers in Matamoros remain alone guarding the plant with dwindling resources.
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In 2019, the so-called “20/32” wildcat strikes in Matamoros saw 70,000 maquiladora workers across dozens of plants walk out for a 100 percent wage increase and to expel the corrupt CTM unions. They marched to the US border bridges, appealing directly to American workers. It was precisely when the movement began to link up with an international socialist perspective, advanced by the World Socialist Web Site, that Prieto intervened to corral it behind appeals to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, preserve CTM structures and negotiate a far more limited 20 percent raise and a 32,000‑peso bonus.
Companies responded with mass victimizations. Plants like Avant, Componentes Universales and Edemsa were shut down, with the latter two refusing to pay severance. Now, one of the plants directly controlled by the union created by Prieto has been closed and the union stands exposed as wholly incapable of defending workers’ livelihoods.
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In Ciudad Juárez, roughly 3,000 First Brands workers lost their jobs. Initial protests and occupations were rapidly smothered with the help of the local government, which organized job fairs for a few hundred workers to transfer them into low‑wage positions at other plants, stores and workplaces.
In Mexicali, where 405 workers lost their jobs at First Brands’ AutoLite plant, the FASIM “independent union” followed SNITIS’s model, filing a lawsuit for “preventive retention” of assets to pay severance. Local media now report that these workers are being blacklisted as “troublemakers” by other employers simply for having worked at AutoLite and taken part in the struggle.
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The perspective required by First Brands workers was outlined in a February 19 statement by Will Lehman, a worker at Mack Trucks and socialist candidate for United Auto Workers president in the United States. Lehman wrote:
I salute the courageous factory occupations spreading across northern Mexico, where workers are taking collective action to stop mass layoffs and defend their livelihoods against US-based corporations…
Workers in the United States, Mexico and Canada must build direct unity from below. That means forming rank-and-file committees in every plant, linking them across borders, sharing information in real time and preparing coordinated action so no workforce stands alone…
If we remain divided, we will be driven into a race to the bottom. If we unite across borders and build our own organizations of struggle, we can defend every job and fight for a future based on human need, not corporate profit.
This is the only way forward.
The occupation of Tridonex can and must be transformed into a conscious center of international resistance by electing a rank‑and‑file committee independent of SNITIS, directly linked to the struggle of autoworkers in the US and beyond through the International Workers Alliance of Rank‑and‑File Committees.
16. Istanbul Mayor İmamoğlu on trial: A political, not legal, case
The trial of 402 defendants, including Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (IBB) Mayor and Republican People’s Party (CHP) presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu, began on Monday.
Of the defendants, 107 are under arrest and have been charged with establishing and managing a criminal organization, bribery, laundering criminal proceeds, fraud against public institutions and organizations, bid rigging and other crimes. The 3,900-page indictment—completed 237 days after İmamoğlu’s detention on March 19, 2025—seeks a prison sentence of up to 2,430 years for İmamoğlu.
The first series of hearings is scheduled to run four days a week for 45 days. This phase, set to conclude in April, will yield an interim ruling on the defendants’ detention status. According to the court’s target schedule, the case is expected to conclude in approximately 4,600 days—that is, 12 years.
The World Socialist Web Site and the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi (Socialist Equality Party) characterized this case from the outset not as a corruption trial but as part of a sweeping political operation aimed at eliminating fundamental democratic rights—including the right to vote, the right to a fair trial and freedom of the press. The trial proceedings have only confirmed that assessment. Workers and all defenders of democratic rights must demand the release of those held as political prisoners in this case.
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The use of the judiciary by the government as an instrument to suppress political opposition is not new. These methods, previously deployed above all against Kurdish politicians, leftists and the opposition press, are now being directed at the CHP. This is a development that signals a qualitative escalation in the establishment of a dictatorship. Yet this process has objective foundations that extend beyond the mere blocking of İmamoğlu’s candidacy: The primary target of authoritarian regime-building is the growing opposition to war, militarism and austerity within the working class.
But the CHP, which represents the interests of the same ruling class, is also a pro-NATO and pro-European Union (EU) bourgeois party. Following İmamoğlu’s arrest, during the mass protests that erupted across the country, it attempted to rein in this movement, steer it toward an electoral dead end and seek grounds for reconciliation with the government. It is impossible for the CHP to consistently defend democratic rights due to its class nature.
This judicial operation, the Erdoğan government’s step-by-step dismantling of democratic rights, and the global rise of authoritarian tendencies are not independent phenomena. All are products of the insoluble and deepening economic, social and political crisis of the capitalist system. Ruling classes across the world are shifting the burden of this crisis onto working people while resorting to ever more authoritarian methods to suppress working class resistance.
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Trump’s second presidency in the United States—in which he has moved to dismantle the Constitution and construct a presidential dictatorship, waging war on the working class, including immigrants—has accelerated and emboldened these tendencies globally, including in Türkiye. Erdoğan has pressed ahead with domestic repression without a word of criticism from Trump, whom he addresses as “my friend,” while Türkiye has largely aligned itself with Washington’s “new Middle East” strategy under the full domination of US imperialism. As the US and Israel wage an illegal war of annihilation against Iran, the Turkish political establishment offers nothing beyond rhetorical criticism.
Deeply integrated into NATO and international finance capital, and fearing above all the opposition rising from within the working class, the political establishment is either complicit in or a passive bystander to the trampling of remaining constitutional and legal norms at home—even as its principal allies dismantle international law abroad. A consistent struggle in defense of fundamental democratic rights demands a frontal assault on the wealth, power, and imperialist ties of the ruling class.
The decisive force in the struggle against dictatorship is not bourgeois opposition parties or courtrooms—it is the working class. Last year’s “No Kings” demonstrations in which millions took to the streets against Trump, this year’s mass protests against ICE, strikes against austerity across Europe, the militant actions of Migros warehouse workers and Polyak miners in Türkiye—all of these reveal the objective potential of the international working class.
17. Emergency Exits: Britain’s brutal counterinsurgency wars, retreat from empire and historical memory
The Imperial War Museum’s Emergency Exits is a remarkable exhibition focusing on Britain’s brutal suppression of three late‑colonial insurgencies—Malaya (now Malaysia), Kenya and Cyprus—in the 1950s.
It is significant because, perhaps for the first time, a major national war museum has assembled an exhibition whose narrative exposes the embedded violence of empire. It documents the draconian measures Britain took to preserve the economic and geostrategic advantages of empire in the aftermath of World War II. Clearly and effectively, it demonstrates that Britain’s “Emergencies” were not aberrations or moral lapses but the predictable outcome of an imperial system in crisis.
Crucially, all the imperialist powers feared that the end of World War II would trigger widespread communist revolutions, as had happened after World War I with the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.
Expectations in the colonies were high. The war had weakened Europe’s empires and emboldened the resistance of colonial workers who had fought for “democracy” against fascism, only to return to colonial rule, repression and poverty. Imperial Japan’s rapid conquest of Europe’s Southeast Asian colonies shattered any notion of European invincibility. US imperialism sought to dismantle these empires for its own interests.
US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had agreed on the Atlantic Charter in 1941, defining their stated principles for the post-World War II world order: self-determination, no territorial aggrandizement, free trade, economic cooperation and freedom of the seas. The Charter of the newly established United Nations did not abolish colonialism outright, but it did include the principles of equal rights and self-determination, which became the legal and moral basis for decolonization and, in effect, declared colonialism illegitimate.
Britain, weakened by war and having already lost India (1947) and Palestine (1948), was unwilling to relinquish its privileged access to raw materials, settler economies and overseas bases in its remaining colonies. It faced a massive economic crisis, including the burden of wartime debt, dollar shortages and the collapse of sterling as a global currency.
As the exhibition explains, the issue facing Britain was how to retreat from empire while retaining its advantages. When insurgent movements in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus sought independence on terms that threatened imperial interests, Britain fought wars it branded “Emergencies” because the term gave colonial authorities sweeping powers of repression and coercion without risking their insurance cover for financial losses that accompany declared wars.
Emergency Exits does more than document Britain’s late‑colonial wars. It reveals a repertoire of counterinsurgency techniques — enclosure, resettlement, administrative control, detention, and psychological warfare — that have recurred in many conflicts since. The exhibition illuminates not only the past but practices that continue to shape state responses to uprisings and territorial conflicts today. This includes US President Donald Trump’s proposal for a modern-day version of the British East India Company to oversee the resettlement of the Palestinians in “humanitarian encampments” where they would work under slave labor conditions for regional capitalists.
But Emergency Exits is significant not simply because it depicts the brutality of empire. Many museums now acknowledge “difficult histories”, adopting a “decolonial” tone that is apologetic, sentimental or moralistic. What distinguishes this exhibition is the sober way it uses archival material to reveal the material logic behind imperial brutality. It shows empire as a system of economic extraction defended through organized coercion. In doing so, it provides—albeit neither intentionally nor explicitly—compelling confirmation of Lenin’s Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism.
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The exhibition provides a devastating rebuttal of US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s ignorant speech at the Munich Security Conference last month, praising Western colonialism and imperialist power and lamenting the post-war demise of Europe’s “vast empires extending out across the globe” built and maintained through countless atrocities. He echoes the ideology of Cecil Rhodes, founder of De Beers diamond mining corporation, whose infamous statement in 1877 opens the exhibition: “I contend that we are the finest race in the world and the more of the world we inhabit the better it is for the human race”.
The exhibition furnishes concrete evidence that Britain’s imperial order was sustained not via benevolence and progress, but through systematic coercion, mass repression and the violent suppression of popular movements. It collapsed because it could not withstand the mass mobilization of colonized workers, peasants, and youth.
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The three colonies are explained in the exhibition in terms of their resources: rubber and tin in Malaya, land and labor in Kenya, and Cyprus’s geostrategic location. These were not incidental details but the economic foundations of British power in the mid‑20th century. To cite but one example, Malayan rubber was Britain’s biggest dollar earner in 1947, bringing in $200 million, compared to the British manufacturing industry’s $180 million. In 1950, Malaya’s tin and rubber accounted for 15 percent of the sterling area’s total dollar earnings and were a crucial source of revenue to pay war debts to the United States.
The “Emergencies” examined in the exhibition were fought to preserve these foundations at a moment when Britain’s global position was collapsing. While the word “capitalism” is not mentioned, the evidence presented in the exhibition—of plantations, mines, settler land grabs and corporate interests—makes the underlying system unmistakable. The violence that accompanied and followed the establishment of empires was not incidental. It is the mechanism by which extraction is maintained in the absence of consent.
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The exhibition gives voice to the colonized working class and rural poor: squatters in Kenya, rubber tappers in Malaya, trade unionists and youth in Cyprus. These are the people who rise up, organize, strike, sabotage and demand land, wages and political power.
The British state responds with the instruments of class repression: mass detention, forced resettlement, collective punishment, psychological warfare, torture and interrogation. This is counterinsurgency: a state of war against a non-state adversary, a colonized population no longer willing to accept dispossession. The violence does not denote the failure of empire but its very essence.
*****
Where Emergency Exits is most powerful is in its use of material evidence. The exhibition does not rely on rhetoric; it lets Britain’s colonial subjects speak. And what they reveal is a machinery of suppression that was systematic, bureaucratic and class‑directed.
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Widespread unemployment, low wages, and soaring food costs following the war led to rapid growth in trade union membership, communist party membership, and the number of strikes. Colonial authorities responded with ever-increasing brutality. Britain used attacks on rubber plantations, carried out in revenge for the killing of left-wing activists, as the pretext to declare the Malayan “Emergency” (1948–1960) in a bid to protect its economic and colonial interests.
It sparked a guerrilla war by communist pro-independence fighters of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the military arm of the Malayan Communist Party, aimed at winning independence for Malaya by targeting tin mines and rubber plantations. British tactics combined fighting insurgents in the jungle with separating MNLA insurgents from local support, mainly in Malaya’s Chinese community, and included scorched earth policies to starve the MNLA.
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The Kenyan “Emergency” was Britain’s response to the Mau Mau rebellion (1952–1960), when landless peasants, especially the Kikuyu community who had been pushed into “reserves” to make way for white settler farms, attacked the farms from scattered forest camps. Under the leadership of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (KLFA), a peasant guerrilla movement, they sought land reform and an end to colonial rule. The colonial authorities sent in locally recruited soldiers or police to protect the farms.
More than a million people suspected of maintaining links with Mau Mau were forced to move into the so-called “colonial villages”, surrounded by trenches and stakes. Conditions were so bad that many died due to illness, disease, hunger or the harsh burden of forced labor.
More than 80,000 Kenyans were rounded up and detained in prison camps without trial during the “Emergency”, with guilt often assumed. Detention became a form of collective punishment. Forced labor and torture were used to “rehabilitate” Kenyans and rid them of the ideas promoted by Mau Mau. Those sent to the colonial villages could not travel or work without the necessary permits.
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The exhibition’s explanation and portrayal of the Cyprus “Emergency” is the weakest. In April 1955, the far-right Greek Cypriot organization EOKA, which sought unification with Greece (Enosis), began terrorist attacks against the British administration in Cyprus. This was unacceptable to Britain, given Cyprus’s position at the crossroads of three continents and its hosting of the most important Anglo-American signals intelligence site.
EOKA’s social base was not the urban proletariat but the Greek Cypriot bourgeoisie and pro‑Enosis petty‑bourgeois layers tied to landlord, commercial and nationalist interests. These social layers saw union with Greece as a means of securing their property, status, and influence in the region, and of escaping British colonial rule on terms favorable to local capital and propertied classes. Its operations targeted not only British forces but also leftists and trade‑unionists in both the Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities who sought working‑class unity across communal lines.
Later that year, Cyprus’s governor Robert Harding who had served in Palestine, Malaya and Kenya and had full military and political power, declared a state of “Emergency” and introduced a raft of unprecedented measures including curfews, checkpoints to control people’s movements, collective punishments, evictions from homes, shop and school closures, the establishment of internment camps, the indefinite detention of suspects without trial, torture and abuse, and the imposition of capital punishment for offenses such as carrying weapons, incendiary devices or any material that could be used in a bomb.
Unable to extract much useful intelligence because of support for EOKA among the Greek Cypriot community, he used divide-and-rule tactics, turning to the Turkish Cypriot population and the Turkish government as a means of blocking the demand for Enosis and paving the way for the intercommunal strife that was to lead to the division of the island in 1974. In 1960, Britain established Cyprus as an independent state, separate from Greece, while retaining two separate bases on the island.
While Britain suppressed all three insurgencies, the organized resistance ultimately forced it to grant independence. But as the exhibition explained, each country was scarred by its experiences of Britain’s divide-and-rule tactics, which set the scene for further conflicts.
*****
One of the most striking revelations of Emergency Exits emerges not from what is displayed, but from what is absent elsewhere. Malaya/Malaysia, Kenya, and Cyprus — the three theatres of Britain’s late‑colonial counterinsurgency — have no major national museums dedicated to these insurgencies. There are scattered plays (such as last year’s staging in Kenya of The Trial of Dedan Kimathi), local memorials, partisan narratives and occasional artistic interventions, but nothing comparable to a sustained, state‑supported public reckoning.
This absence flows inexorably from the class composition of the ruling elites that took power after independence. As the old adage, commonly attributed to that arch imperialist Winston Churchill, goes, “History is written by the victors”.
*****
In each case, the ruling class that emerged after independence had no interest in memorializing movements that challenged the very foundations of their authority. To commemorate these insurgencies honestly would require confronting unresolved questions of land redistribution, labor exploitation, ethnic division, and the unfinished business of decolonization.
Silence, therefore, became a form of control. Paradoxically, as the IWM exhibition reveals, Britain—the former imperial power—is now able to display the violence of its late‑colonial wars with a degree of candor that would be politically impossible in the countries where those wars were fought.
This is not because Britain is more honest. Far from it. As the exhibition explains, the colonial authorities secretly removed or destroyed “sensitive” documents before independence to avoid embarrassing the government. In 1961, the Colonial Office issued explicit instructions applicable across the empire to destroy any material that might “embarrass Her Majesty’s Government.” The exhibition notes add that in the years following the Emergencies, British official photography emphasized the humanitarian role of the armed forces.
*****
Britain can exhibit (for now) what it once concealed, whereas the former colonies must suppress what they cannot acknowledge. Emergency Exits, therefore, reveals not only the violence of empire but also how memorialization is shaped by class power, political fear and the unresolved issues of decolonization.
That said, the mainstream media has not reviewed the exhibition, indicating the sensitivities that still surround Britain’s violent retreat from its imperial possessions. Moreover, its counterinsurgency apparatus was continued in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan and Iraq, with legal cases and human rights litigation ongoing.
The insurgencies in Malaya and Kenya were led by landless peasants, plantation workers, miners, and youth. Their demands—land redistribution, political rights, the dismantling of colonial structures—were the “bourgeois‑democratic” tasks that the national bourgeoisie in the modern era, with the rise of the working class as a major force in society, was historically unable to carry out.
Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution demonstrates that the colonial peoples cannot achieve their most basic needs—freedom from imperialist oppression, democratic rights and social equality—by aligning with any section of the national bourgeoisie. In the imperialist epoch, the realization of such democratic and national tasks, associated in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the rise of the bourgeoisie, requires the working class to take power. Victory in this struggle can be secured only as part of the struggle for world socialist revolution, placing the resources of the national and global economy under the control of the workers and oppressed masses.
After independence, power passed to conservative nationalist elites, land‑owning families, business interests aligned with imperial capital and bureaucratic strata trained under colonial rule. These groups inherited not only the state but also the imperial logic of suppressing the working class, the rural poor and insurgent memory. To commemorate the revolts honestly would require confronting unresolved questions of land, resources, labour and class power — questions that remain politically explosive.
*****
Emergency Exits, by exposing the violence of late empire and revealing the silence that surrounds it elsewhere, makes one thing unmistakably clear: the history of imperialism is not only a struggle over which class controls land, resources and labor—via capitalist exploitation and war—it is also a struggle over who gets to remember and who is required to forget.
“Emergency Exits: The Fight for Independence in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus” is on at the Imperial War Museum in London until March 29, 2026. Further online resources associated with the exhibition are available here, including a large print guide.
18. UK Labour government bans Al-Quds Day march as crackdown on pro-Palestinian movement intensifies
The Labour government has banned this Sunday’s Al-Quds Day march in London, marking a significant escalation in the state’s crackdown on the pro-Palestinian, anti-war movement.
Al-Quds Day—named after the Arabic name for Jerusalem—is traditionally marked by marches and protests around the world in solidarity with the Palestinian people and opposition to Israeli occupation. The event was first established shortly after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, with demonstrations taking place internationally.
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In Britain, the Al-Quds Day march has been held for four decades, generally peacefully and without major incident.
The principal exception occurred in 2017, when a fascist, Darren Osborne, attempted to attack the protest with the aim of killing participants he believed might be present, including then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Corbyn and Khan did not attend. Unable to reach the protest due to a police cordon, Osborne went on, just hours later, to carry out a murderous attack at Finsbury Park Mosque.
March organizers the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC)—in a March 8 letter to the Metropolitan Police—made the points about Osborne being unable to attack the 2017 event due to the police cordon, and requested a similar level of police presence this year, but it fell on deaf ears. Acting in close collaboration with the police and responding to demands from right-wing political figures, including Zionist organizations, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood ordered the prohibition of the demonstration scheduled for March 15.
The ban is the first on a demonstration since 2012, when one was imposed on a proposed march of the far-right English Defence League through east London.
Not only is the march banned under Section 13 of the draconian Public Order Act, but Mahmood also prohibited “processions in London related to al-Quds Day involving protesters and counter-protesters, for a full month from Wednesday, March 11.” London’s Metropolitan Police commissioner will be permitted to request a further extension.
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Any genuine risk of violence is a result of pro-war Iranian monarchists and fascists being emboldened to carry out attacks on protesters by the government’s support for the US-Israeli war and regime-change operation against Iran.
Last week, a public meeting in Manchester organized by the Greater Manchester Stop the War Coalition —addressed by Your Party anti-war MP Zarah Sultana—was attacked by hundreds of pro-war Iranian monarchists and fascists who attempted to storm the venue.
Under current legislation, neither the home secretary nor the Met have any powers to ban a static demonstration from taking place, but Mahmood gave the signal for a police crackdown against the one now planned by the IHRC organizers.
*****
Workers and young people must oppose the Al-Quds march ban as a fundamental assault on democratic rights. Every attack on the right to protest—initially directed against pro-Palestinian demonstrators—will ultimately be used against the entire working class in its struggles against war and exploitation.
The defence of democratic rights is inseparable from the fight against Britain’s participation in the criminal assault on Iran, the expanding conflict in the Middle East and the spread of wars across the globe.
As the Socialist Equality Party has argued, “What is needed is a fight for socialist internationalism among workers of all countries, who have shared interest in bringing down the warmongers attacking their jobs, wages, living conditions and democratic rights.
“Only a movement totally independent of the capitalist parties can put a stop to this barbarism.”
19. Workers Struggles: Africa & Europe
Africa
Ghana:
Kenya:
South Africa:
Europe
Austria:
Hospital and IT workers in strike for improved pay and hours
Bulgaria:
Workers at state-run postal service in warning protests over low wages and poor conditions
Cyprus:
Licensed taxi drivers in strike for more help from government
Germany:
Hundreds of office workers at BASF chemicals in Berlin protest thousands of job losses
United Kingdom:
All-out strike by dockers at Immingham over unfair dismissals
Further strikes by staff at London hospital over outsourcing and bullying claimsSupport staff at UK universities hold further stoppage over pay
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.
