Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. No to the imperialist-Zionist aggression against Iran!
The following statement against the US-Israel war on Iran was issued on Wednesday by Ulaş Sevinç, chairman of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi (Socialist Equality Party) in Türkiye.
2. War abroad, mass layoffs in the US: The working class must stop the assault on Iran
The resources ripped from the working class are being used for two purposes: the enrichment of the oligarchy, whose wealth has soared to the highest levels in history, and to fund imperialist war. The United States has already spent roughly $3.7 billion in the opening days of its bombing campaign against Iran, while the Trump administration is proposing a $1.5 trillion military budget. This would be a 50 percent increase over what is already the largest military budget in history.
3. British National Security Council leaks reveal secret preparations for assault on Iran
Leaked accounts of meetings of the National Security Council (NSC) have exposed the British Labour government’s detailed advance knowledge of the US-Israeli assault on Iran.
The revelations demolish the lies of Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his ministers that Britain, supposedly committed to diplomacy, was taken by surprise by the US/Israeli bombardment of Iran on February 28.
Published in the conservative magazine The Spectator by journalist Tim Shipman, the leaks confirm that British officials had been informed of the planned offensive 17 days in advance and were engaged in intense discussions with Washington over how the Labour government could assist.
Far from opposing the war, Starmer and Defence Secretary John Healey sought ways to support it, while senior British military figures worked directly with US officials to frame requests for British bases in ways that would circumvent legal objections.
According to the leaked account, the US formally contacted British officials on February 11 requesting the use of two key bases—RAF Fairford in England and Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands—to assist in the planned assault on Iran.
Fairford was critical as the only European military base equipped to support US (B-52s, B-2s) heavy bombers. Diego Garcia has various advantages, including serving as a major port for nuclear submarines and being located 2,400 miles from Iran’s southern coastal cities—its relative proximity allowing those to be targeted more easily.
Shipman notes the legal advice provided by the Attorney General Richard Hermer, who warned that the UK could be considered complicit in an illegal war if it facilitated pre-emptive strikes without a direct threat to Britain:
“Hermer’s ruling – that international law does not permit pre-emptive strikes unless there is an ‘imminent’ threat to Britain – was already established when the Americans contacted UK officials on 11 February to ask about the use of the bases – 17 days before the offensive began, 17 days in which Britain could have done much more to prepare.”
Shipman reports: “It was the view of almost everyone that it was not legal for the UK to be involved in the initial attack because there was no imminent threat to the UK from Iran.”As part of the broader effort to keep the public in the dark while a war on a sovereign state was being planned—disguised by official negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program—the government delayed publishing the official summary of its legal advice until March 1, withholding the full contents from public view.
This leak establishes that the Labour government knew well in advance that the assault being planned by Washington and Tel Aviv was illegal under international law. Yet the government, in order to ally itself with the Trump administration as its self-declared most reliable military security partner, spent the following weeks debating how Britain could eventually participate.
This is more damning still in light of the fact, as confirmed by US and Israeli officials, that the assault was originally scheduled to begin on February 21 but was delayed a week. The reasons included poor weather, operational coordination between US forces and the Israel Defense Forces, and the imperative to convince Iranian leaders that no strike was imminent as negotiations were ongoing. It means that Britain’s window of prior knowledge was even longer than the 17 days explicitly mentioned in the leaks.
*****
The Labour government’s attempt to portray its policy as guided by international law has rapidly unraveled. Within days of the war’s outbreak, ministers began signalling that Britain could become directly involved in military operations against Iran.
4. Nashville journalist seized by ICE as administration targets reporters documenting immigration raids
The kidnapping of Nashville Noticias and Univision reporter Estefany Rodríguez Flórez by the US immigration Gestapo has sparked outrage across Tennessee and throughout the United States.
Rodríguez Flórez, a mother, wife and widely respected member of Nashville’s immigrant community, was seized by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on the morning of March 4 at approximately 7:15 a.m. while heading to the gym with her husband, Alejandro Medina III.
According to eyewitness accounts, Rodríguez Flórez was in her clearly marked press vehicle when she and Medina were surrounded by multiple unmarked vehicles carrying masked and heavily armed ICE agents, who detained the journalist and took her into custody.
Rodríguez Flórez is a Colombian journalist who earned her degree in journalism in her native country, where she worked in media before coming to the United States. She joined the Nashville Noticias news team in 2022, covering social issues, immigration, family matters and policing in Tennessee’s growing Latino community.
Her reporting has included articles critical of ICE and the government’s ongoing mass deportation operations, policies that target immigrant workers and threaten the democratic rights of the entire working class. The same methods now used against immigrants are being developed as tools of repression against the working class as a whole, including striking workers and opponents of expanding US wars abroad.
According to The Guardian, which cited Rodríguez Flórez’s attorney, the journalist was arrested without a warrant. Her lawyers state that she has been living lawfully in the United States for the past five years, possesses a valid work permit and has applied for political asylum while also seeking legal residency through her husband, a US citizen.
For several hours after the arrest, Rodríguez Flórez’s family and lawyers did not know where she had been taken. Her name briefly disappeared from the ICE detainee locator system, effectively leaving her unaccounted for. It was only late Friday evening that her name reappeared in the system, indicating that she had been transferred to Etowah County Jail in Alabama, hundreds of miles from her husband and her eight-year-old daughter.
*****
Press-freedom organizations have condemned the arrest. The Committee to Protect Journalists called for Rodríguez Flórez’s immediate release, describing her detention as part of a “shameful and alarming pattern of the Trump administration’s use of immigration authorities to clamp down on freedom of the press.”
A GoFundMe in support of Rodríguez Flórez and her safe return has raised over $10,000.
The detention of Rodríguez Flórez is not an isolated case. The Trump administration has used the immigration police to target multiple journalists, including Texas photojournalist Yaakub Vijandre and Atlanta-based reporter Mario Guevara, both of whom have faced detention after covering protests against the Gaza genocide and the opposition to Trump’s dictatorial ambitions respectively.
Vijandre remains detained more than five months after being taken by agents at gunpoint after refusing to become an FBI informant. Guevara was arrested while covering the “No Kings” protest in June 2025 and later deported to El Salvador after being transferred to ICE custody despite the dismissal of local charges.
US citizen journalists covering protests opposing the Trump administration have also been targeted with criminal charges. Prosecutors have brought charges against former CNN anchor Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort over their reporting on an anti-ICE protest at a Minnesota church attended by a senior immigration official.
The targeting of journalists is part of a broader assault on the democratic rights of the entire working class. As the Department of Homeland Security expands surveillance tools and databases to monitor immigrants, protesters and US citizens alike, reporters who expose the government’s lies and violence are increasingly becoming targets themselves.
While the Trump administration lies daily about everything from its war against Iran to anti-immigrant propaganda and racist smears directed at Somalis, Haitians and other immigrant communities, the falsehoods issued by the Department of Homeland Security to justify violence by immigration agents continue to collapse under minimal scrutiny.
Body-camera footage obtained by CBS News, Newsweek and other outlets conclusively demonstrates that officials lied about the killing of 23-year-old US citizen Ruben Ray Martinez by an ICE agent in South Padre Island, Texas last March.
5. Canada: Student protests erupt against Ford government’s cuts to Ontario Student Assistance Program
Widespread protests among high school and university students have erupted after the right-wing Progressive Conservative government announced sweeping cuts to Ontario Student Assistance Program (OSAP) grants last month. Starting in September, the portion of maximum grant offered to eligible students through the province’s student assistance program will drop from 85 percent to 25 percent, with the remainder made up of loans.
Over 470,000 students in Canada’s most populous province rely on the modest level of OSAP support to make ends meet during their studies. Already confronting skyrocketing prices for housing and groceries, students losing out on grants will now also have to deal with increasing tuition fees, which the government is giving universities the option to hike by up to 2 percent annually for the next three years, beginning with the new academic year next September. Premier Doug Ford, a right-wing populist demagogue, demonstrated his indifference to the social consequences at a press conference last month, where he lambasted students for purchasing “cologne and fancy watches” with OSAP funds.
Hundreds of university students joined a rally organized by the Canadian Federation of Students and other student groups outside Queens Park Wednesday, chanting “No cuts, no fees, no corporate universities.” One participant from Toronto Metropolitan University told the Canadian Press, “Some days I’m (already) skipping meals. I’m a mature student, so my parents aren’t paying for anything. This is all coming out of my pocket. So I don’t know how I’m going to do it. If I’m only in first year, I have second, third and fourth year as well. I can’t graduate with $50,000, $60,000 in debt.”
*****
In recent days students have walked out at multiple high schools in Windsor, and at twenty high schools in Oshawa and the Durham Regional Municipality, of which it is part. College and university students in Ottawa and Oshawa have also organized walkouts to protest the cuts.
The Ford government is working hand in glove with Mark Carney’s federal Liberal government to streamline post-secondary education and ensure that students are directed into courses relevant for Canadian imperialism’s militarization of society. The latest attack on students coincided with the Carney government’s release of its Defence Industrial Strategy, which includes plans for hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for universities and other scientific institutions tied to research and developing advanced technologies for waging war.
*****
The 2026 Canada Food Price Report anticipates that overall food prices will increase by 4 to 6 percent this year. Healthy food is becoming a luxury item. Wages, let alone student support, have not kept up with inflation, which results in massive cuts to living standards.
Students will have to make difficult decisions on how to feed themselves. They will have to eat cheap, less healthy fast food, skip meals all together or visit a food bank. Food banks are seeing an explosion in demand, according to Feed Ontario’s annual Hunger report released last December. “We’ve reached an all-time record high with more than one million people needing to turn to food banks in the province,” Carolyn Stewart, Feed Ontario CEO, told CTV News Toronto.
Ontario is also in the midst of a housing crisis, particularly in Toronto and other large cities where students must typically attempt to make ends meet. A one-bedroom apartment costs well over $2,000 in Toronto and many other cities.
*****
As part of its sharp swing to the political right, the federal Liberal government decided in early 2024 to impose caps on international students and initiated a broader crackdown on immigration. Ontario’s quota for international students was halved, plunging post-secondary institutions into deeper financial trouble. According to one estimate, some 10,000 workers have lost their jobs at Ontario colleges over the past year due to budget cuts.
*****
The Ford government’s assault on student assistance is a component of a wider onslaught by Canada’s ruling class on all public services and social programs. The established political parties, functioning on behalf of the financial oligarchy that dominates social and economic life, are only prepared to fund education to the extent that it produces results and human labor suitable for the needs of Canadian imperialism. These needs have been made clear by Carney over the past year with his announcement to spend 5 percent of the GDP on war by 2035, his government’s virtual abrogation of the right to strike, and its involvement in an historic restructuring of the postal service along the lines of Amazon to serve as a benchmark for the entire public service. Carney’s open endorsement of American imperialism’s criminal and barbaric war on Iran will accelerate this process.
These sustained attacks create the conditions for students to mobilize broad support in defense of well-funded and affordable public education from kindergarten to the post-secondary level. The precondition for this is a decisive break from any perspective based on the idea that Ford and his backers in the oligarchy can be fought on the university campuses alone or by one-off protests outside the provincial legislature. This is a ruling class determined to offload their crisis onto the backs of young people and workers. The minority federal Liberal government is backed in parliament by the social democratic New Democratic Party and enjoys a helping hand to maintain control of opposition outside parliament from its allies in the trade union bureaucracy.
What is above all required for students to secure their demands is an orientation to the struggles of the working class. All workers, whether postal workers, autoworkers, public sector employees, and low-paid and precariously employed workers throughout the private sector have an interest in securing high-quality publicly funded education for all, whether it benefits themselves or their children. By linking the fight against funding cuts for post-secondary education with the fight against job cuts, the undermining of worker rights, and wage and benefit cuts and the defence of health care and all public services, students can contribute to the building of a powerful mass mobilization against capitalist austerity and imperialist war. This will be realized only if students adopt a socialist program that places the social needs of the vast majority before the accumulation of private profit by the oligarchs.
Labour-run Birmingham City Council (BCC) has obtained a High Court injunction against protesters supporting a strike by the city’s refuse workers. It prevents them from even gathering at the four yards covered by the dispute and came into effect on February 20.The injunction not only extends the council’s battery of attacks meant to break the resistance of 400 refuse loaders and drivers opposing drastic pay cuts of up to £8,000 a year and job losses, in a dispute now in its fourteenth month, which became an all-out strike from March 11. It sets a far-reaching legal precedent for the extension of anti-union laws to any form of strike or protest action by sympathizing groups.
The most consequential implications are for non-unionized workers—the overwhelming majority, especially among younger generations.
*****
The Starmer government has overseen the state-orchestrated attack on Birmingham bin workers from the beginning. Last March, when the BCC declared a “major incident” to grant itself unprecedented powers to conduct strike-breaking operations, including the use of military planners, Starmer rose in Parliament to declare, “We’ll put in whatever additional support is needed.”
So far £34 million has been spent on crushing the resistance of a small but combative section of workers. The Labour authority running the UK’s largest city declared insolvency (Section 114) in September 2023 to enforce, with unelected commissioners, £300 million worth of cuts over the past two years, devastating local services. This included a fire sale of assets worth £750 million and a 17.5 percent council tax increase.
The latest High Court injunction reinforces a previous injunction last May, barring effective picketing by strikers, extending this to any third-party support. It sets a wider precedent by removing any means through which pressure can be exerted on an employer without it being deemed unlawful.
Unite, led by General Secretary Sharon Graham, acceded to the legal restraints last year, reducing pickets to six at each council yard as metal barriers were erected to pen workers in. It apologized in court in October for strikers’ acts of defiance and has made no comment on the latest injunction directed at supporters.
The Starmer government, faced with popular opposition to austerity and the war drive it funds, is conducting lawfare against democratic rights. High Court injunctions against “persons unknown” were also used against pro-Palestinian campus protests by students demanding institutions sever economic ties with Israel and firms profiting from the mass murder.
The use of injunctions to curb protests on the grounds of protecting business operations and private property from “disruption” is at the heart of a widening dragnet striking at the heart of freedom of assembly and speech. They supplement the Public Order Act 2023 and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022, which have granted police and prosecutors unprecedented powers of arrest and imprisonment.
The erosion of the right to protest and prohibition of effective action against an employer raise fundamental issues about how to mobilize collective opposition in the working class against a government dependent on authoritarian methods to impose its hated political agenda.
*****
The issue facing Birmingham strikers confronts every worker in charting a new way forward for a genuine revival of the class struggle, based on the development of rank-and-file committees against the interests of the capitalist oligarchy—enforced jointly by the union bureaucracy and the Starmer government.
7. Venezuela and US reestablish diplomatic relations as Chavistas hand over oil, minerals
The US State Department announced Thursday the reestablishment of diplomatic ties with Venezuela. The move follows the January 3 military assault on Caracas in which over 100 were killed in an operation to abduct President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, now jailed in the US and facing life in prison on fraudulent charges of “narco-terrorism.”
Relations were severed in 2019 when the first Trump administration recognized CIA puppet Juan Guaidó as the “legitimate president” as part of a failed regime change operation.
The announcement follows a two-day visit by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum to Caracas, where acting president Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s former vice president, announced deals handing oil and critical minerals over to Washington and US-based multinational corporations.
*****
As an indication of its priorities, the regime in Caracas announced in mid-February the axing of seven social programs and organizations, including the so-called “missions” that provided limited social aid to some of the poorest layers of Venezuelan society.
Burgum also signed an agreement with Venezuela's mining company to buy a thousand kilograms of gold, and Rodriguez announced a mining reform to open the sector to transnationals. The reform will be inspired by a hydrocarbons law passed in January that privatizes oil and cuts tax rates.
There are vast deposits of rare earths, niobium and platinum group metals in Venezuela, especially in ecologically sensitive areas including Cerro Impacto in the Amazon rainforest. But the country remains largely unexplored.
*****
In a matter of weeks, Rodríguez has handed over control of the economy and shaken hands with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, SOUTHCOM’s commander Gen. Francis Donovan, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and other top US officials. Despite once decrying Trump’s “perverse plans of fascism,” she now calls the would-be US Fuhrer her “friend and partner” and writes on social media: “I thank President Donald Trump for his kind willingness... to work together.”
A joint pact with the Pentagon and CIA has been signed ostensibly against drug cartels, turning Caracas into an imperialist hub even as the Trump administration adds insult to injury almost daily after the January 3 assault waged explicitly to take “all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets” of Venezuela.
Maduro’s lawyers have denounced Washington for blocking them from accessing money to pay for his defense, while Trump gloats in his State of the Union how “Elite American warriors… overwhelmed all defense” in “a colossal victory.”
*****
According to US sources speaking to Reuters, Rodríguez faces a potential Miami indictment for corruption as leverage to ensure compliance, while Washington demands the arrest of other Maduro allies for extradition.
This takes place in the context of extreme US sanctions—which killed 100,000+ per ex-UN rapporteur Alfred de Zayas and drove 8 million into a mass exodus. Venezuela’s refiner in the US, Citgo, faces auction to US financial vultures for debt. US bombings in the Caribbean/Pacific have killed 152 fisherman, including many Venezuelans, and thousands of Venezuelan migrant workers rot in US concentration camps.
In this context, the subservience of the Socialist Party of Venezuela regime is only comparable to semi-colonial regimes such as Porfirio Díaz’s Mexico, Juan Vicente Gómez’s Venezuela, the Somozas’ Nicaragua and Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, all of which combined savage repression and torture with extreme inequality and corruption. The Chavista leadership is doing everything possible to demonstrate that it can oversee US interests in Venezuela as effectively as the openly fascist CIA-financed opposition led by Maria Corina Machado.
*****
At the Americas Counter Cartel Conference with representatives from US-aligned regional countries on Thursday, Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller roared: “We are NOT going to cede an INCH of territory in this hemisphere to our enemies or adversaries!” This was echoed by War Secretary Pete Hegseth, who threatened a unilateral onslaught to secure US domination: “America is prepared to take on these threats and go on offence alone if necessary.”
Globalization and financialization since the 1980s have intensified the drive of imperialism to gain control over strategic minerals, fuels and global production networks through recolonization and war. The response by all factions of the national ruling elites to globalization has been to subordinate all considerations to the vying for investments.
Chavez and Maduro were not exceptions but simply sought to gain better terms with imperialism by leveraging close economic and political ties with other powers, mainly China and Russia.
Having come to power on the heels of major popular uprisings against inequality and dictatorship marked by the 1989 Caracazo, Chavez used surplus income from booming oil prices driven by Chinese growth to pay for limited social assistance programs. But, as soon as the commodity boom ended, the Chavistas themselves began major cuts.
Today, bourgeois nationalists find it increasingly impossible to exploit the opportunities once provided by rivalries between major powers as they face growing pressure of imperialism from above and the resistance of the working class from below.
The relinquishing by the Chavista leadership of economic, political and territorial sovereignty and the overall accommodation by nominally “left” governments across the region to Trump’s threats demonstrate that bourgeois nationalism is, without exception, a counter-revolutionary agency of imperialism.
*****
While Stalinists and pseudo-left groups internationally climbed on the bandwagon, peddling illusions in and joining these governments, now these forces attack the World Socialist Web Site arguing that the Chavistas have a “gun to their head.” What else are they to do? Such is the demoralization of the petty-bourgeois layers that these tendencies speak for.
But the current explosion of US imperialism is rapidly radicalizing workers, amid a global leftward lurch. The issue is not how best the Chavista government can respond to conditions it helped to create, but rather mobilizing workers and youth to overcome these nationalist betrayals and politically arming them for the overthrow of capitalism, independently of all nationalist and pro-capitalist political forces.
The German-Turkish-French co-production Yellow Letters by Ilker Çatak (The Teachers’ Room, 2023) received the main prize at this year’s Berlinale, the Golden Bear. The film is a powerful warning against the threat of censorship and state oppression, including in Germany and other countries.Derya (Özgü Namal) is an established actress at the Ankara State Theatre dedicated to her profession. After a politician’s mobile phone rings irritatingly several times in the middle of a performance, she refuses his later request for a photo together and doesn’t allow herself to be persuaded by the theatre director.
The situation in the country is tense, with the Turkish army fighting alleged terrorists from the Kurdish minority. Anti-government activists are denounced as supporters of terrorism. Nevertheless, a peace demonstration attracts a large crowd. Derya’s husband Aziz (Tansu Biçer), a scientist, lecturer and playwright, allows the few students who attend his lecture to leave. Sometimes, he says, you learn more outside the lecture hall.
Shortly afterward, he and a number of colleagues are dismissed on flimsy grounds. His play at the State Theatre, which deals with Kurdish identity among other things, is also cancelled. Fellow actors blame Derya for rejecting the politician’s photo op. Events pile up in quick succession.
The couple’s landlord tells them he is concerned about his reputation. The police have inquired about terrorist activities in the building. Later, Derya receives a “yellow letter” in which the theatre informs her it is complying with her request to terminate her contract (in fact, she has never resigned). The university files a lawsuit against Aziz. There are also difficulties with a bank loan. In a short time, the family is isolated and destitute.
*****
Yellow Letters is a thoughtful film without pathos, but also without dark fatalism. The daughter, overwhelmed by the situation, is proud of her parents’ maxim that an artist must stand on his or her own two feet....
9. Condemn US sinking of Iranian vessel in Indian Ocean! Oppose US-Israel war against Iran
The US sinking of Iran’s naval frigate, IRIS Dena, off Sri Lanka’s southern coast in the Indian Ocean on Wednesday is a criminal act of mass murder. Some 140 Iranian sailors drowned at sea; 32 sailors were rescued, not, as required by the Geneva Conventions, by the US submarine that torpedoed it, but by the Sri Lankan navy.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka condemns this war crime and the illegal war of aggression by US imperialism and Israel against Iran.
We condemn both the Sri Lankan and Indian governments for their complicity in this war. We call on the working class of South Asia to unite with their class brothers and sisters internationally to build an anti-war movement based on socialist policies to halt this war.
In Washington, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth celebrated the mass murder, claiming: “Yesterday in the Indian Ocean, an American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters... Quiet death.”
*****
The IRIS Dena was sunk in the full knowledge that it was unarmed. The rules of the Indian exercise included a prohibition on carrying ammunition. The US Navy, which also participated in the same drills, knew that it posed no threat. The atrocity once again demonstrates that Hegseth’s “total war” is a declaration of complete lawlessness by the fascistic Trump administration.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government has maintained a criminal silence on the sinking. The Indian Navy claimed it responded to the distress call relayed by Sri Lanka by deploying maritime patrol aircraft and naval assets, but stressed that the IRIS Dena had already left Indian waters and that India bore no responsibility for the sinking.
Since day one, New Delhi has neither criticized the war nor so much as mentioned its authors—the United States and Israel—but has simply made empty calls for “restraint”. On the eve of the war, Modi made a two-day visit to Israel and was undoubtedly informed of the impending bombardment of Iran. New Delhi’s silence on the sinking of an Iranian warship, which was its guest just days before, confirms its full support for US imperialism’s war of aggression.
The Sri Lankan government’s response is just as duplicitous. Its navy, in compliance with international maritime obligations, launched a search and rescue operation after receiving a distress call from the IRIS Dena. Of the 180 aboard, it managed to save just 32 Iranian sailors and recovered some 87 bodies.
In a Thursday press conference, Sri Lankan President Anura Dissanayake made no criticism of the submarine attack or protested the criminal role of the United States. In a hollow posture of independence, he told the media: “We do not act in a biased manner towards any state, nor do we submit to any state.”
The government’s refusal to initially allow a second Iranian naval vessel, IRIS Bushehr—a supply ship that had accompanied the IRIS Dena in the Indian naval exercises—to take refuge in Colombo harbour on Thursday speaks to the contrary. After the sinking of the IRIS Dena, it was clearly another potential US target.
*****
Dissanayake’s claims to an independent foreign policy are a fraud. Since coming to office, his government has integrated Colombo even more closely into US war planning against China and strengthened ties with Israel—continuing the policies of his right-wing predecessor, Ranil Wickremesinghe.
Barely a week before US and Israel launched war on Iran, US Navy Admiral Steve Koehler, Pacific Fleet Commander, visited Sri Lanka on February 19–21 for a second time, meeting with ministers and military commanders. Nominally about counter-piracy, humanitarian and disaster response, the timing reeks of a US mission to ensure Sri Lankan backing for the impending assault.
*****
The working class in South Asia has a mighty anti-imperialist tradition—from its struggles against British colonial rule to its opposition to US-led wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere. That heritage must be revived in the fight to halt the US-Israeli war on Iran and the descent into a catastrophic new global conflict.
Workers in India and Sri Lanka should denounce the sinking of IRIS Dena and their governments’ complicity in naked US-Israeli acts of colonial brigandage and war. They must unite with their class brothers and sisters across South Asia and internationally in an anti-war movement based on socialism policies to overthrow the capitalist system and its outmoded division of the world into rival nation states—the root cause of war.
10. South Australian election: Public education decays as billions funnelled into AUKUS war plans
Teachers and students confront deteriorating public schools, while military contractors and the Defense Department embed themselves in classrooms.
11. Trump demands unconditional surrender from Iran as war enters second week
President Donald Trump declared Friday that there will be “no deal with Iran except UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” the most extreme formulation yet of American war aims, one that signals the intention to wage permanent war until Iranian society is destroyed.
In a phone interview with Axios, Trump defined what he meant: “Unconditional surrender could be that [the Iranians] announce it. But it could also be when they can’t fight any longer because they don’t have anyone or anything to fight with.” In other words, surrender is not a diplomatic act but the physical annihilation of a country’s capacity to resist—the reduction of a nation of 90 million to rubble.
The statement comes as the White House is considering the direct deployment of US troops on the ground in Iran.
*****
The scale of the destruction inflicted on Iran after seven days of bombing is immense and accelerating. Iran’s Red Crescent Society reported that the death toll has risen to 1,332, with more than 6,500 wounded. More than 3,600 civilian sites have been damaged.
*****
Iran remains under a near-total internet blackout—connectivity at roughly 1 percent of normal levels—for a seventh consecutive day. The Iranian rial has collapsed to a historic low of more than 1,660,000 to the dollar on the open market. Hospitals, pharmacies, and banks continue to operate without reliable communications. The economy, already ravaged by decades of sanctions that had driven food prices up more than 100 percent before the war, is in free fall.
Trump spent Friday morning meeting with the chief executives of the seven largest American defense contractors—RTX/Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, L3Harris Technologies, and Honeywell—at the White House. Lockheed Martin stated afterward: “We have agreed to quadruple critical munitions production. As a result of President Trump’s leadership, we began this work months ago with Secretary Hegseth and Deputy Secretary Feinberg.”
Trump boasted that they had agreed to “quadruple production of the ‘Exquisite Class’ weaponry,” without defining the term, and noted that the US possesses “a virtually unlimited supply of Medium and Upper Medium Grade Munitions” currently being dropped on Iran.
The meeting took place as oil surged above $90 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude rose more than 12 percent on Friday alone and posted a weekly gain of more than 35 percent—a record since WTI futures began trading in 1983. Brent crude settled at $92.69. Traders warned that $100 oil was imminent if the war continues.
*****
US media has devoted significant attention to statements that Russia is providing Iran with targeting data on US military positions across the region, including the locations of American ships and planes. This is presented as “interference” in the conflict, while the massive and illegal bombardment of Iran by the US and Israel is treated as legitimate.
*****
The report on Russian intelligence sharing is being treated in Washington not as a reason for restraint but as a pretext for further escalation—and potentially for widening the war to include direct confrontation with Russia, a nuclear-armed power. The Wall Street Journal headline read: “Russia Secretly Sharing Location of U.S. Targets With Iran.” The editorial boards of both the Journal and the Washington Post used the report to demand a harder line, with the Journal declaring that Russia and Iran are “working together to threaten U.S. troops.”
Israel has seized upon the war to launch a massive new offensive against Lebanon. On Thursday, the Israeli military issued an unprecedented blanket evacuation order for the entire Dahiyeh district of Beirut, home to hundreds of thousands of people, and ordered the evacuation of more than 100 villages and towns in southern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley. Israeli troops have crossed into southern Lebanon in a ground incursion.
Since March 2, Israeli strikes on Lebanon have killed at least 217 people and wounded more than 798. Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich declared that Dahiyeh “will look like Khan Younis”—the Gaza city that has been virtually leveled.
In Gaza, Israel shut every border crossing on March 1, halting all food, fuel, medicine, and humanitarian aid to more than two million people. World Central Kitchen warned it would run out of supplies within a week. In some areas of Gaza City, residents have access to as little as two liters of drinking water per day.
Reuters published an exclusive investigation Friday revealing that Israel has been holding talks with Iranian Kurdish insurgent groups for approximately a year, coordinating plans to seize Iranian border towns. Three sources told Reuters that the initial goal is the capture of the towns of Oshnavieh and Piranshahr in western Iran. The militias are believed to have between 5,000 and 8,000 fighters armed with light weapons.
*****
Not a single faction of the American political establishment, however, opposes the war. The procedural objections raised by the Democrats are a fig leaf designed to provide political cover while the party’s leadership endorses the destruction of an entire country.
Mounting evidence points to a breakdown in hospital infrastructure and management in New South Wales, including multiple incidents of dangerous mould, asbestos and pest infestations.
13. Lorain County, Ohio family service workers strike enters third week: “We are fighting everyone”
Workers at the Lorain County Department of Job and Family Services—140 members of UAW Local 2192—are in their third week on strike for higher wages, affordable healthcare and safe, adequately staffed working conditions.
14. German train drivers’ union agrees to real wage cuts and stabs local transport workers in the back
The collective agreement negotiated by the German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) with the German rail company Deutsche Bahn (DB AG) on February 26 amounts to a real wage cut that stabs local transport workers, who are also engaged in collective bargaining negotiations, in the back. With this agreement, the GDL is providing the German government, which owns Deutsche Bahn, an indispensable service against the working class.
First, the agreement includes a real wage cut. The new contract, which begins with a six-month wage freeze and a 5 percent wage increase in two steps starting in August 2026, will not compensate for the real wage losses during this period. Two linear wage increases of 2.5 percent each are planned, the first on August 1, 2026 and the second on August 1, 2027.
The new agreement also includes a one-time payment of €700 for employees and €350 for trainees and student trainees (as well as for employees who have been with the company for 35 years, the new pay grade 8). However, the one-time payments are only intended to ease the pressure in the short term. They are not included in the pay scale and therefore do not represent a permanent improvement in purchasing power.
*****
What is particularly striking is that the GDL is concluding negotiations and agreeing to a two-year strike ban at a time when anger and militancy among colleagues are growing.
Deutsche Bahn is in the process of launching a massive attack on jobs and working conditions. Just last week, the Deutsche Bahn executive board announced that “thousands of jobs” would be cut at DB Cargo. According to internal sources, only 8,000 of the 14,000 jobs in the freight division will remain by 2030. This will inevitably affect many train drivers and massively increase the work pressure for the rest.
In addition, the latest sell-off comes at a time when the German Merz-Klingbeil government is planning far-reaching social attacks to finance its war policy. It is attacking the eight-hour working day, continued pay in the event of illness, protection against dismissal and pensions. Last year, Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared: “We can no longer afford the welfare state.”
In this situation, the GDL’s agreement has deprived train drivers and conductors of the opportunity to effectively fight for better conditions and against the government’s war policy in a joint struggle with tram, bus, light rail drivers, pilots, flight attendants and other sections of the working class.
*****
The GDL agreement confirms what the World Socialist Web Site has been writing for years: The GDL, which initially presented itself as more militant than the other German Trade Union Confederation unions representing rail workers, EVG and Verdi, has proven to be just as compliant a prop of management and the government against workers. It has repeatedly called off strikes prematurely out of deference to the federal government and German business. The GDL has even set up its own temporary employment agency for train drivers, Fair Train, and elected the ultra-right-wing Rainer Wendt as its supervisory board chairman.
After the last wage agreement, the WSWS wrote:
The GDL is following the same path as all the trade unions. Deprived of the opportunity to negotiate limited reforms within a national framework by the dominance of global financial institutions and corporations, they have turned into company policemen. While asset values and share prices are rising, they are responsible for falling wages, job cuts and increasing workloads. They are fully behind the government’s pro-war policy and help it to pass the costs of rearmament and war onto the working class.
This has been clearly confirmed by the latest collective agreement with its real wage cuts. It effectively separates train drivers and conductors from other employees and is proving to be a strike breaker. With its gag clause stipulating a two-year ban on strikes, the GDL is tying the hands of train drivers and conductors in an explosive political situation.
The attacks on wages, working hours and public services are international, as are the increasingly threatening preparations for war. Train drivers, train attendants and all workers must counter the nationalist policies of the GDL, EVG and Verdi with international cooperation among the working class. The working class can only defend itself by building independent rank-and-file committees and uniting with their colleagues in local and long-distance transport, workshops, on-board staff, public transport depots and other public services.
15. “Master Plan” outlines devastation of public education in Philadelphia
A $2.8 billion Facilities Master Plan for the Philadelphia School District proposes the closure of 18 schools across the district as part of a sweeping restructuring of facilities. District officials argue that the closures are necessary to fund and enable the plan’s other measures, including modernizing 159 schools, maintaining more than 120 facilities and expanding access to Algebra 1. The changes would not begin until the 2027–28 school year and would be implemented gradually over a 10-year period.
The plan was presented on Thursday, February 26 by Philadelphia Superintendent Dr. Tony Watlington Sr. to the Philadelphia Board of Education, which is expected to vote on the proposal in the coming months.
*****
The proposal marks a decisive stage in the restructuring of public education in Philadelphia and a continuation of policies that subordinate the educational and social needs of working-class youth to the imperatives of austerity and real estate interests. While officials speak of “equity” and 21st-century learning environments, the plan avoids the fundamental issue: the chronic diversion of public funds away from education and into corporate subsidies, tax abatements and debt service.
School officials present the plan as a pragmatic response to declining enrollment, aging infrastructure, underutilized facilities, high maintenance costs and budgetary constraints. Yet the very conditions invoked to justify these cuts are themselves the outcome of decades of systematic underfunding and the expansion of charter schools—policies supported by Democratic and Republican administrations alike.
*****
A second town hall has been scheduled for March 12 with representatives from all affected schools, featuring 60 speakers from the general public and 30 student speakers. Residents will also be able to submit their comments online.
Residents have also raised concerns about what will happen to school buildings once they are closed, with several properties slated for transfer to the city for redevelopment or other uses, fueling fears that public school buildings will ultimately be converted into private real estate projects.
These concerns are compounded by a lack of transparency in the process, with serious questions remaining about behind-the-scenes involvement of real estate developers in decisions that will reshape neighborhoods across the city. This tension reflects a broader contradiction at the heart of Philadelphia: a city home to immense wealth concentrated among developers, finance capital, and major health and education corporations, yet one where students continue to endure deteriorating buildings, asbestos exposure and overcrowded classrooms.
*****
Despite widespread opposition among parents and educators, and the fact that many of its members will lose their jobs in school consolidation, the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) has offered no genuine resistance to the plan—complaining only about the manner in which it has been presented.
*****
Teachers, school staff, parents and students must organize independently to oppose school closures and demand full funding for public education. Rank-and-file committees formed in every school can unite educators with broader sections of the working class confronting austerity measures in transportation, healthcare and other public services.
Teachers forming such committees would not be starting from scratch. During last summer’s powerful strike by Philadelphia municipal workers, which nearly brought the city to a standstill before being sold out in the dead of night by AFSCME District Council 33 and the Democratic Party, the Philadelphia Workers Rank-and-File Strike Committee was founded to demand the resumption and expansion of the strike, including to public school teachers. The defense of public education, like municipal services, transit and living standards, requires that workers organize together in rank-and-file committees, independent of the trade union apparatus that works to block and betray their struggles.
On Monday, 2 March, the trial began at the Hanover District Court concerning the fatal accident on 8 September 2023 at the Hanover-Linden freight yard.
Early Sunday morning, March 1, three people were killed and 14 others wounded in a shooting at Buford’s Backyard Beer Garden, a bar in Austin, Texas’s Sixth Street entertainment district. Austin police said officers were called around 1:40 a.m. after reports of a gunman firing at the bar.
The shooter, identified as 53-year-old Ndiaga Diagne, first carried out a drive-by attack with a handgun before driving a short distance west along Sixth Street to Wood Street, where he exited his vehicle and began firing on pedestrians with an AR-15-style rifle. Officers already stationed on Sixth Street confronted the gunman, who fired at them before police returned fire and killed him.
Police spokesperson Lisa Davis identified the victims as Savitha Shan, 21; Ryder Harrington, 19; and Jorge Pederson, 30, who later died in a hospital from his injuries. Harrington was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Texas Tech University, according to a statement posted on the fraternity’s Instagram page. The two other victims remain hospitalized in critical condition. Authorities said both weapons used in the attack had been legally purchased. Images circulated widely in the corporate media showed Diagne wearing a sweater reading “Property of Allah,” while photographs released to CBS News also showed him wearing a T-shirt bearing an Iranian flag and the word “Iran.”
Diagne was a naturalized citizen born in the West African country of Senegal. At the time of his death he was a resident of Pflugerville, a rapidly growing suburb of Austin around 15 minutes from downtown Austin with a population of 65,000. A little under 1 in 5 (18.6 percent) of the residents of the suburb are first-generation immigrants. Naturalized citizens constitute 12 percent of residents, while almost 6 percent do not hold citizenship.
Republicans are using the shooting to demand funding be restored to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and stoke anti-Muslim attitudes in the population. In a hearing Wednesday featuring at the time DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee and a senator from Iowa, brought up “Iranian sleeper cells” in his opening statement saying, “Given the Iran conflict, what steps has Homeland Security taken to protect against potential Iranian sleeper cells and related terrorism?”
After praising Noem for stopping the “invasion” of the United States by “criminals, rapists ... and normal people,” Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, arch-warmonger and Trump’s golfing buddy, said the US was engaged in “military action against the mothership of terrorism Iran.”
Graham asked Noem if she thought the “threat level against the United States” from “radical Islamic terrorism” was “up or down?” Noem dutifully replied, “It’s up.”
Raising his voice, Graham added, “Can we not understand that America is under siege now? Likely to be attacked because radical Islam is under siege and they are likely to hit back.”
*****
The rhetoric deployed by Republican officials closely echoes the language used by the US government in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks. At that time, warnings of terrorist “sleeper cells” and hidden enemies inside the country were used to justify sweeping expansions of domestic surveillance and policing powers, including the Patriot Act and the rapid growth of agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security.
The same campaign was used to launch the global “war on terror,” a series of US-led military interventions that cost trillions of dollars, devastated large parts of the Middle East and Central Asia, displaced millions of people and killed vast numbers. None of these measures improved the lives or security of working people in the United States or anywhere else. Instead, they enriched military contractors and corporations tied to the military-industrial complex while expanding the apparatus of state surveillance and repression in the US and internationally.
Even federal investigators have not supported these claims. While the FBI said materials recovered from Diagne’s vehicle suggested a “potential nexus to terrorism,” officials also stated that it was too early to determine a motive and that the shooting may have been an isolated incident. Nearly a week after the attack, no evidence has emerged that Diagne was connected to the Iranian government or to any terrorist organization.
18. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Australia:
Pacific National rail workers in Queensland locked out
Bangladesh:
India:
New Zealand:
19. Stop the imperialist war of extermination against Iran!
The aim of this webinar is to place the struggle against the war in its necessary historical, political and social context. It will cut through the endless stream of lying propaganda and disinformation pumped out by the White House, the corporate media, and all the imperialist governments.
20. Communist Party Marxist-Kenya leader Booker Omole released on bail, others arrested
The Kenyan state has allowed Booker Ngesa Omole, General Secretary of the Communist Party Marxist–Kenya (CPM-K), to leave remand on punitive bail while maintaining the fabricated charges against him and escalating repression against the party and its supporters.
On February 23, Omole was violently abducted in Isiolo town by plainclothes police officers who produced no warrant and offered no identification. He was beaten severely, tortured and brutalized—his tooth was broken and his finger was cut with a penknife.
He was transported for hours and dumped at Mlolongo Police Station, a facility notorious for extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. Denied access to lawyers, family, or party members, Omole was later transferred to Kitengela Remand Prison with a bandaged hand, the court denying him both cash bail and urgent medical care.
The state assembled a case only after his detention. The absurd charges include attempting to kill police officers and connections to a Venezuelan “drug cartel”—fabricated because the CPM-K had organized protests in solidarity with the Bolivarian government against Washington’s imperialist intervention in January. These charges remain in force.
The demand for Omole’s release gained international backing. Tens of thousands of posts circulated on the social media platform X calling for his freedom. The campaign was amplified by users with tens of thousands, and in some cases hundreds of thousands, of followers, reflecting the broad outrage provoked by his abduction and concern over state repression in Kenya. The capitalist press has said nothing.
*****
Even as Omole was released on bail, the Ruto regime arrested three more CPM-K members. According to the CPM-K, Mulinge Muteti, Julius Kamau and Collins Otieno were arrested and detained at Central Police Station in Nairobi. They were arrested while submitting a petition against extrajudicial killings.
The abduction of Omole, the fabricated charges against him, the arrests of CPM-K members and of TikTok content creator Peter Maingi Kimani (known as Menelik Kimani) underscore the intensifying turn toward authoritarian methods by the “broad-based unity” government of President William Ruto—uniting the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) founded by the late political fixer Raila Odinga.
These measures are part of a broader effort by the Kenyan ruling class to suppress opposition amid mounting social tensions.
Immediately following Omole’s abduction, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) denounced the attack and demanded his immediate and unconditional release, warning that the targeting of the leadership of the CPM-K signaled a broader assault on democratic rights in Kenya.
The ICFI has well-documented and irreconcilable political differences with this political tendency, which have been clearly presented in the WSWS. But it unequivocally opposed the brutal attack on Omole, demanded his immediate release, and called for an end to all state threats, abductions and repressive acts directed against the CPM-K.
*****
The defense of democratic rights cannot be entrusted to any faction of the Kenyan bourgeoisie or to the union apparatus tied to it, but requires the independent mobilization of the working class.
The repression directed against the CPM-K is far from over, as demonstrated by the renewed arrests of its members. Omole himself remains under prosecution on the same fabricated charges that were brought after his abduction.
The government of Ruto, like regimes across Africa, confronts mounting anger over austerity measures dictated by the IMF and soaring living costs. These pressures are set to intensify amid the global economic turmoil unleashed by the US–Israeli imperialist war on Iran. Engulfing the whole Middle East, the war underlines the speed with which world capitalism is descending into global war, dictatorship and outright criminality.
For the Kenyan and broader African bourgeoisie, tied by a thousand threads to global finance capital, the response to these crises is intensified repression. In Zambia, police arrested and charged Fred M’membe, President of the Socialist Party, following remarks he made during an appearance on the radio concerning the delayed burial of former President Edgar Lungu.
In South Africa, the government led by the African National Congress has deployed 450 troops into townships under the pretext of restoring order. In Tanzania, last year’s elections were followed by mass killings and disappearances in a brutal post-election crackdown. In Uganda, the regime of Yoweri Museveni continues its systematic suppression of opposition forces.
The international solidarity campaign that helped force the Kenyan authorities to release Omole from remand on bail must be extended to the defense of Bogdan Syrotiuk, a 26-year-old socialist and member of the ICFI imprisoned in Ukraine since April 2024 on fabricated charges of “state treason.”
Syrotiuk founded the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists, which opposed both the Russian invasion and the NATO-backed proxy war by fighting to unite Russian and Ukrainian workers. Facing a potential life sentence and now being denied urgently needed medical treatment, he is the target of political persecution aimed at criminalizing socialist opposition to the war.
All organizations and individuals who support the campaign to free Omole should join the international struggle for Syrotiuk’s freedom: demand the provision of immediate medical treatment, the dropping of all charges and his release, and sign and circulate the petition in his defense.
21. 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.
