Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. As Los Angeles educators prepare strike, administrators and union officials meet for emergency talks
On April 14, nearly 70,000 Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) workers are poised to strike, driven by years of deteriorating conditions, poverty wages and the intolerable reality that many cannot afford to live in the very communities they serve.
The strike, if it proceeds, would be a historic confrontation involving teachers, classified staff and administrators in the nation’s second-largest school district. It reflects a deepening insurgency of workers confronting a bipartisan assault on public education, living standards and democratic rights.
The mandate for the strike is overwhelming. In separate strike votes, 94 percent of teachers and 97 percent of service workers voted in favor. These votes expressed mounting anger against the attacks on public education.
Yet on Wednesday, officials from United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 99 and the Associated Administrators of Los Angeles (AALA/Teamsters) met with LAUSD representatives behind closed doors, signaling a last-ditch effort to block a strike.
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No talks under these circumstances will result in a deal favorable for workers. The district’s wage proposal underscores its contempt for workers. LAUSD offers an 8 percent ongoing salary increase and a one-time 3 percent bonus spread over two years, with a “reopener” clause that effectively postpones any further gains indefinitely.
UTLA’s demand for roughly 17 percent over two years, including raising starting teacher pay to about $80,000, given the staggering cost of living in Los Angeles, is a modest demand which would still leave many educators struggling to cover living expenses.
For classified workers, including custodians, cafeteria staff, bus drivers and aides, average annual earnings are only $35,501, with many falling into the category of “extremely low income.” Many of these are immigrants, faced with the ever present threat of ICE terror. SEIU is demanding only a 13 percent increase over three years.
Conditions have existed for a powerful statewide and national movement in defense of public education. Contracts were up for virtually every major school district in California over the past year, and almost every major school district in America has been fighting massive cuts since the pandemic supplemental federal funding was allowed to expire by the Biden White House in its last year. This has gone further under Trump, who is seeking to abolish the Department of Education and divert hundreds of billions to the military.
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Yet the bureaucrats in the California Teachers Association have worked consistently to block unified action and isolate school districts from each other. A four-day strike was shut down earlier this year in San Francisco with abysmal 4 percent annual wage increases in one of the world’s most expensive cities.
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The decades long decline in American public education can be reversed only through a fight by the working class for a massive redistribution of wealth out of the hands of the oligarchy and the military in favor of social needs. This means a broad national and even global movement pitting the working class against the entire capitalist political establishment.
The union bureaucracy is working to prevent this at all costs to avoid upsetting its relationship with the Democratic Party and corporate America. Already this year, one struggle after another has been sold out, including by nurses at Kaiser Permanente and in New York City, mostly immigrant meatpacking workers in Greeley, Colorado, graduate students and academic workers at the University of California and New York University and hundreds of military contractors at the Bath Iron Works shipyard.
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The central question is not whether workers are prepared to fight. The strike authorization votes and growing militancy provide a clear answer. The question is how this opposition can break through the obstacle of the pro-corporate trade union apparatus. A general rule has emerged: The more militant the workers and the more powerful their position the more openly and ruthlessly the bureaucrats attempt to sabotage them.
To advance their interests, educators and school workers must take the conduct of the struggle into their own hands. This requires the formation of rank-and-file committees, independent of the unions, that can organize democratic discussion, advance demands based on actual needs and link up with other sections of the working class. Such committees provide the means to immediately stop the backroom deals and maneuvers of the bureaucracy as well as reverse all layoffs initiated so far.
2. Japan deploys long-range missiles for the first time
Amid the US-Israeli war against Iran, the US and Japan are at the same time rapidly implementing plans to expand the war into an even larger conflict, above all aimed at China. This includes the continued joint militarization of Japanese southern islands in the East China Sea and the Pacific.
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Tokyo also plans to further upgrade its Type-25 HGP missiles to give them a range of 2,000 km for deployment in the near future to islands in the southern Ryukyu chain, which includes Okinawa, giving Japan the capability of striking deep into Chinese territory. The military will also arm its Aegis destroyers with US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles later this year, as well as its fighter jets with JASSM-ER missiles. Those have ranges of 1,600 km and 900 km respectively.
The militarization of these islands has been ongoing by successive Japanese governments since Shinzo Abe was prime minister from 2012 to 2020. Missiles, radar installations and garrisons have been established on Ryukyu islands including Miyako, Ishigaki, Amami and Yonaguni, the last of which is just 110 km east of Taiwan.
The stated goal of the present Takaichi government is to be able to strike the launch sites of missiles in China or North Korea before a so-called “imminent” attack, claiming that this constitutes self-defense. In reality, Tokyo is planning pre-emptive attacks in alliance with Washington against China, which both see as the greatest obstacle to their imperialist and economic interests in the region. Any Japanese missile attack on China would be coordinated with Washington’s operations.
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The criminal US-led war against Iran has not drawn a single word of opposition from Tokyo, which has echoed Washington’s false pretext of stopping Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. This is providing the framework for a similar war of annihilation against China.
Tokyo’s militarization of its islands takes place in close collaboration with the US military. However, behind this agenda, Tokyo is not simply acting as the junior partner to Washington, but has its own imperialist interests which it is preparing to achieve through war. Through the expansion of its armed forces nationwide, Tokyo is seeking to make its military more independent from Washington.
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All pretensions that the US is concerned with “humanitarian assistance” or defending “freedom” have been torn away through the illegal war in Iran. The Trump administration, like those of Biden and Obama before it, are putting the pieces in place to launch a devastating war against China.
Much in the same way that Washington and NATO goaded Russia into the conflict in Ukraine, Washington and Tokyo have been at the forefront of provoking Beijing over Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province to be reunited with the mainland by force if it were to declare independence. Beijing is conscious that an independent Taiwan would become a staging ground for US military actions against China, while setting a dangerous precedent for the further carve-up of Chinese territory.
3. David North calls for building the anti-war movement in interview with Turkish channel TV5
In an interview with Turkish channel TV5, WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North warns that the two-week pause in the US bombardment of Iran is merely an interlude and calls on workers internationally to build a movement against imperialism based on the unification of the working class.
North concluded with a direct and urgent appeal to the Turkish audience: “Please understand how dangerous the situation is. We all have seen now what the imperialist powers are prepared to do. They speak of annihilation of entire civilizations. They speak of genocide on a scale that even surpassed what Hitler attempted.”
4. Australian special forces soldier Ben Roberts-Smith charged with war crimes against Afghan civilians
Whatever the outcome of the case against Roberts-Smith, there is no question that Australian governments and the military command oversaw and covered up war crimes in Afghanistan.
Workers across the United States have expressed deep and unequivocal opposition to the Trump administration's military aggression against Iran, defending the Iranian people and calling for mass working class resistance.
6. Armed clash erupts near Israeli consulate in Istanbul
At around noon on Tuesday, April 7, three assailants armed with long-barreled weapons engaged in an armed clash with police officers stationed outside the plaza housing the Israeli consulate general in Levent, Istanbul. Following the clash, which lasted approximately five minutes, one of the assailants was killed and the other two were wounded and taken into custody. Two police officers sustained minor injuries.
The armed clash occurred on the day that the US-Israeli war against Iran reached a critical threshold for the entire world, carrying the risk of spreading throughout the region and beyond. President Donald Trump had threatened to destroy Iranian civilization and had given the country until Tuesday night to surrender.
The authorities initially refrained from disclosing to the public which organization the attackers were affiliated with. In a statement, Interior Minister Mustafa Çiftçi said that the deceased attacker was “linked to a terrorist organization that exploits religion” and that the attackers had traveled to Istanbul in a rented vehicle from İzmit.
Meanwhile, media reports have indicated that the attacker killed in the clash was named as Yunus Emre Sarban and that his assets were frozen in 2021 due to his alleged links to the Islamic State (ISIS). However, no group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
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US and Israeli officials, meanwhile, condemned the attack on the grounds that it targeted Israel and praised the Turkish police. U.S. Ambassador to Ankara Thomas Barrack stated the following in a post on his X account: “The United States condemns in the strongest terms today’s attack on the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul. Attacks on diplomatic missions are attacks on the international order—and an assault on the principles that bind nations together. We commend Türkiye and Turkish security forces for their swift and decisive response.”
The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated, “We strongly condemn the terrorist attack on the Israeli Consulate in Istanbul today” and added: “We appreciate the Turkish security forces’ swift action in thwarting this attack. Israeli missions around the world have been subjected to countless threats and terrorist attacks. Terror will not deter us.”
The fact that the US and Israel condemn “terrorist attacks” and “attacks on diplomatic missions,” while also talking about the international order, is a prime example of imperialist hypocrisy. After all, these are the very same powers that launched an illegal and criminal war with the aim of eliminating Iran’s leadership, slaughtering thousands of civilians in the process, and threatening to destroy its civilization and “send the country back to the Stone Age.” Although the two-week ceasefire that began on April 8 has temporarily halted the war of annihilation against Iran, Israel’s invasion of Lebanon and the genocide in Gaza continue.
The circumstances surrounding this attempted armed attack remain unclear, and there is no substantial evidence to support the claim that it was targeting Israel. Following the tensions that arose with Türkiye after Israel’s invasion of Gaza in October 2023, it withdrew its diplomatic personnel from the consulate general in Istanbul and the embassy in Ankara.
7. Israel bombards Lebanon with 160 missiles within hours of Trump’s ceasefire announcement
Within hours of President Trump’s ceasefire announcement in the imperialist war against Iran, the Israeli military struck central Beirut on Wednesday and multiple sites in southern Lebanon with 160 missiles. The strikes hit dense commercial and residential areas without warning, killing hundreds of people and wounding more than 1,000 others.
Lebanon’s Civil Defense said at least 254 people were killed and 1,165 others were wounded in the attacks on five neighborhoods in Beirut, the southern city of Tyre district, Adloun, the entrances to Chih and Marahin, and areas near Khiam, Bint Jbeil, Mayfadoun and al-Sarira.
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Associated Press journalists reported seeing charred bodies in vehicles and on the ground at one of Beirut’s busiest intersections in the Corniche al-Mazraa neighborhood. Reuters and other outlets reported that Israel destroyed bridges over the Litani River and accelerated demolitions of homes in border villages, indicating a deliberate campaign against civilian infrastructure.
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Video images circulating on social media show the devastation caused by the blasts with civilians assisting emergency crews looking for victims and survivors in the rubble of the densely populated Beirut.
Hezbollah issued a statement describing the Israeli strikes as war crimes targeting innocent civilians. Hezbollah also cited its understanding that the cease fire agreement included Lebanon at the request of Iran. Later in the afternoon, the speaker of the Iranian parliament stated that the agreement had been violated.
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A statement made by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exposed the fraudulent nature of the ceasefire. He said Israel still has goals to complete in the war and it will achieve them “either by agreement or by the resumption of the fighting.” He also said, “We are prepared to return to combat at any necessary moment. Our finger is on the trigger.”
Netanyahu also said he wanted to emphasize that the ceasefire is not the end of the war, adding, “This is a way station on the way to achieving all of our goals.”
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The events in Lebanon mirror those of the Gaza ceasefire and the Trump negotiated “peace plan,” which serve as a cover for a continuation of the Israeli genocide against Palestinians and set up the framework for a permanent occupation of more than half of the enclave by Israeli forces. At least 723 Palestinians have been killed by Israel and nearly 2,000 injured since Trump’s Gaza ceasefire went into effect on October 10, 2025.
According to statements from Israeli officials, the strategic aims of the assault on Lebanon include a long-term occupation and annexation of 10 percent of the country. Defense Minister Israel Katz has announced plans for a “security zone” up to the Litani River and the expulsion of more than 600,000 residents from their homes. The project also includes the leveling of Lebanese border villages and destruction of bridges as central objectives.
8. Perspective: Amid deep divisions over ceasefire agreement, Israel launches massive attack on Lebanon
Within just one day, the two-week “ceasefire” with Iran announced by Trump Tuesday night is already falling apart, amid ongoing bombardments across the Middle East and an intensifying internal crisis within the United States itself. Sharp divisions have opened up within the ruling class and state apparatus over how to proceed after a war that has not achieved its aims.
The entire situation raises the urgent imperative for workers not to rely on hopes for some sort of peaceful resolution of the imperialist war against Iran, but to develop an independent mass antiwar movement.
Even what was agreed to as the basis of the ceasefire is itself entirely unclear and disputed. Just hours after the deal was announced, Israel carried out a massive bombardment of Lebanon on Wednesday. It was the single deadliest day of Israeli attacks on the country since 2006. At least 254 people were killed and more than 1,100 wounded, including 35 children. Israeli jets struck apartment buildings, residential streets and crowded commercial areas across central Beirut and the southern suburbs.
The ceasefire between the US and Iran was first announced by Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who brokered the agreement. In his announcement Tuesday evening, Sharif declared that the United States and Iran “along with their allies have agreed to an immediate ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere.”
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There are indications that Israel carried out the attack on Lebanon to sabotage the US-Iran ceasefire agreement. The Wall Street Journal published an article Wednesday, under the headline “Israel Was Informed Late About Cease-Fire Deal and Wasn’t Happy,” reporting that Israel “wasn’t formally part of the Iran negotiations.”
Israel, however, would not have launched an attack on this scale without the support of significant factions within the US political establishment.
Within the United States, criticism from the political establishment, both Democratic and Republican, has centered on condemnations of Trump’s ceasefire announcement as a debacle for American imperialism and a dangerous and unacceptable concession to the Iranians.
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Late Wedneday, Trump posted on Truth Social, “All U.S. Ships, Aircraft, and Military Personnel, with additional Ammunition, Weaponry, and anything else that is appropriate and necessary for the lethal prosecution and destruction of an already substantially degraded Enemy, will remain in place in, and around, Iran, until such time as the REAL AGREEMENT reached is fully complied with.” Trump thratened to attack Iran “bigger, and better, and stronger than anyone has ever seen before,” adding, “our great Military is Loading Up and Resting, looking forward, actually, to its next Conquest.”
The strategic objectives of the United States have not changed. Washington launched this war to impose direct control over the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz and reverse the consequences of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. War against Iran is itself part of an escalating global war—one that extends from the Middle East to the confrontation with Russia and China—and the pressure for renewed military escalation will intensify.
The entire experience of the past two weeks must be understood as an enormous warning to the working class in the United States and internationally. Just 24 hours ago, Trump was pledging to “end” Iranian civilization—threatening to transfer the methods of the Gaza genocide to a country of 90 million people. Trump’s genocidal language cannot be unsaid, and genocide has been officially adopted as a method of conducting war by an American president.
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The only way to stop this war is through the independent mobilization of the working class as a class force. Neither the Democratic Party nor any faction of the political establishment will oppose imperialist war in principle. Whatever their tactical disputes with Trump, the Democrats defend the same strategic aims—US domination of the Middle East—and function above all to suppress the emergence of a movement from below that threatens the entire structure of capitalist rule.
The fight against imperialist barbarism requires the development of an independent working class movement—in workplaces, across industries and across borders—against the war, against the assault on social programs and against the capitalist system that is the root cause of war, dictatorship and social inequality.
9. Iran war shock causes IMF to revise down global growth forecast
As is always the case with the financial institutions of global capitalism, attention to inflation does not mean developing means to bring prices down. The focus is ensuring that any significant wages movement of the working class, in response to increasingly intolerable price hikes, will be countered by rises in interest rates.
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With interest payments on US government debt now exceeding even spending on the military, the bond market reaction to the oil price shock was a rise in yields. This was sending out a warning as the administration, habituated to spending as if there is no limit, increased military outlays by $1.5 trillion. Combined with tax breaks and other decisions, this could lift the deficit close to 7 percent of GDP this year.
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Besides the quantum of government debt, there is also the issue of who holds it and how it is being financed. In a recent comment, FT columnist Gillian Tett drew attention to significant research carried out by the New York Federal Reserve last October into the so-called “basis trade” in US Treasuries.
This is the process by which hedge funds and others exploit the tiny differences between the future price of Treasuries and the cash price of the bonds. Because the difference is so small, large amounts of leverage are needed to make substantial profit.
The result has been a transformation in the structure of the $30 trillion Treasury market—the basis of the global financial system—over the past four years.
As Tett drew out in her report, the Cayman Islands, the home of 85 percent of hedge funds, located there for tax minimization purposes, is “the largest foreign holder of US Treasury securities—holding significantly more than China, Japan and the United Kingdom.”
The Fed economists found that between 2022 and 2024, hedge funds “absorbed 37 percent of net issuance of notes and bonds” and this was “nearly the same amount as all other foreign investors combined.” (Italics in original.)
These funds operate according to similar algorithms, which means that in the event of a market shock they tend to react in the same way, creating the conditions for a rush for the exits and a financial crisis.
Thus, as concerns grow over the growth of debt in the face of the shock to the global economy resulting from the war—whatever the outcome of the present ceasefire negotiations—the Treasury market, which finances this debt, is being turned into a giant casino.
10. Hungary elections: US Vice President Vance throws his weight behind Orbán
For the working class, this election offers no progressive alternative. Neither Orbán nor Magyar represents its interests. Both stand for militarism, social attacks and authoritarian forms of rule—albeit with differing foreign policy orientations.
11. Project Hail Mary—a hopeful (but somewhat wishful) adventure
The overall result is a charming but cartoonish pastiche that, while broadly appealing, falls short of its ambition to be a truly insightful film.
12. As election losses mount, White House pursues ballot-rigging plans
Special elections in Georgia and Wisconsin Tuesday continued the pattern that has prevailed throughout the second Trump administration—a collapse of political support for the Republican Party, despite the failure of the Democratic Party to offer any genuine alternative to Trump’s policies of war, economic austerity and attacks on democratic rights.
The results gave further impetus to Trump’s efforts to prevent a landslide defeat in the mid-term elections November 3 through voter intimidation, blocking access to the ballot for poor and minority voters, and deploying his ICE immigration gestapo and even the US military at the polls.
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Trump’s approval rating in national surveys has sunk below 40 percent. The most recent figures showed him at 41 percent in Wisconsin and 38 percent in Georgia, the two states where voting took place Tuesday.
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The election in Georgia, in the 14th Congressional District, the state’s largely rural northwest corner, was to fill the vacancy created by the resignation of Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the fascist advocate of conspiracy theories who fell out with Trump over foreign policy, particularly the US war with Iran. A March 10 primary left Democrat Shawn Harris, a retired Army general, who is African-American, competing with Republican Clay Fuller, a local district attorney.
Fuller won the runoff election with 56 percent of the vote compared to 44 percent for Harris. The 12-point margin was down sharply from 2024, when Greene defeated Shawn Harris by 29 percentage points, and Trump defeated Kamala Harris by 37 points. Even more significant was the collapse in voter turnout, which fell from nearly 300,000 to just over 130,000.
The Georgia result showed the largest swing against the Republicans of any special election since Trump took office. Such a double-digit swing to the Democrats, if it were to materialize on Election Day this year, would sweep an estimated 80 Republican House members out of office and would cost the Republicans control of the Senate as well.
All told, Democrats have captured 30 Republican seats in state legislatures and other off-year contests, while the Republicans have not captured a single Democratic seat. This pattern shows the mounting popular hostility to the Trump administration, albeit distorted and constrained by the reactionary, anti-democratic structure of the two-party system, with both parties committed to the defense of the financial oligarchy and the capitalist system.
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In an appearance on the Rachel Maddow Show on Monday night, Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia declared, “I am terrified that this administration is going to try to create some incident that can allow federal intervention.”
Warner, the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is well-informed on the operations of the US national security apparatus. He suggested that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was playing a major role in an effort to declare that foreign actors were interfering in the US elections, making it necessary to mobilize federal troops at polling stations.
He pointed to Gabbard’s presence during an FBI raid on election offices in Atlanta, Georgia and in seizing voting machines in Puerto Rico, actions that would not normally concern a cabinet official with responsibility for overseeing US intelligence-gathering overseas.
Warner continued, “the idea they would pick some threat real or conceived to use as an excuse, I think we have to be very conscious of. So I’ve been trying to meet with former military leaders, intelligence leaders, law enforcement, just to say, you know, if you see something that comes out that’s a crock, speak up and rebut. And the press, frankly, needs to do it as well. This is about the heart of our democracy, whether it’s going to be free-and-fair elections.”
For all their professions of concern, however, neither Warner nor any other leading Democrat has called for action to defend the right to vote or to oppose Trump’s efforts to rig the elections. They are far more afraid of a popular movement against Trump’s drive towards dictatorship than of anything Trump himself might do.
13. Nationwide roadblocks by truckers and farmers in Mexico face repression
Mexican truckers and farmers launched a nationwide strike over war-driven diesel and fertilizer cost surges and insecurity, facing brutal repression by the Morena government.
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.
