Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today: 

1. The global eruption of the class struggle and the rebellion against the union bureaucracies

Tom Hall: The global eruption of the class struggle and the rebellion against the union bureaucracies 

The World Socialist Web Site presents the report delivered by Tom Hall to the Ninth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US), held August 2–7, 2026, introducing the fourth resolution, “On the international class struggle and the building of the IWA-RFC.”

To enhance study, what follows is a bulleted outline of Tom Hall's report, made with the assistance of Socialism AI::

I. The origins of the IWA-RFC and the fight for workers' power

• Rank-and-file committees are instruments of class struggle and organizing centers of an anti-bureaucratic insurgency, but also "anticipatory forms of genuine workers' democracy and workers' power" (quoting David North's opening report)
• The IWA-RFC was developed over decades from the party's analysis of the contradictions of world capitalism
  • After the USSR's dissolution, union bureaucracies suppressed opposition to plant closures, wage cuts, and the destruction of social rights
  • Beneath this "outward stability," capitalism carried out an international reorganization of production predicted to produce revolutionary consequences
• The upsurge was anticipated in advance:
  • 1988 ICFI perspectives document: the next stage of proletarian struggles would develop "along an internationalist trajectory"
  • 1993 Workers League perspectives (The Globalization of Capitalist Production…): the League must initiate new forms of organization independent of the trade union apparatus
  • By 2018, teachers' rebellions and a resurgence of strikes signaled the breakdown of the decades-long suppression
• The Fifth Congress resolution called for an interconnected network of workplace and neighborhood committees, independent of the union apparatus (citing Trotsky: committees raise the question "Who shall be the boss of the factory?")
• A 2018 internal memo addressed the relationship between committees, the party, and uneven political consciousness
  • Committees were not restricted to workers who had already reached socialist conclusions
  • Instilling confidence to act independently of the bureaucracy is "more than 75 percent of the struggle"
• But hatred of the bureaucracy is not yet a complete break with its program
  • The bureaucracy is the crystallization of the historic bankruptcy of national reformism
  • Dangers on both sides: retreating from irreconcilable struggle for immediate demands; or a "political struggle" detached from the living struggles
• The connection between workers' democracy and socialism: attempts at actual control over production bring workers into conflict with the capitalists' "right" to determine everything by profit
• The 2022 Congress resolution: the IWA-RFC is not a replacement for the party, nor merely an instrument of conventional trade union struggles; committees are "the fighting organizations and schools of revolution of the present period"

II. The significance of the Will Lehman campaign for UAW president

• The 2022 Lehman campaign was the most concentrated practical expression of this conception
  • Received 4,777 votes under conditions of vote suppression (only 9% of membership returned ballots)
  • Established a national audience and brought workers across plants and companies into contact
• The campaign dealt a blow to the bureaucratic maneuver to rehabilitate the apparatus
  • The pseudo-left promoted Shawn Fain as proof the union could be renewed by changing personnel at the top
  • Lehman alone rejected this, fighting for a program of workers' power against the apparatus as an institutionalized agency of corporate management and the state
• The claims for Fain's "democratic" unions have been demolished:
  • Thousands of temporary workers fired after the 2023 Big Three contracts; layoffs spread
  • Federal monitor reports exposed a "gangster regime" in Solidarity House
  • "Historic" contracts followed within weeks by sweeping cuts (Chicago teachers' 3,700 eliminated positions; Philadelphia teachers' strike blocked; AFSCME ending the DC 33 strike after eight days without a membership vote)
• General rule formulated: the stronger the objective possibility of a united struggle, the more directly the apparatus intervenes to break it apart
• Lehman's opponents denounced him for injecting "politics" into the unions — meaning socialist politics, not bourgeois politics
• The apparatus is being integrated ever more directly into the capitalist state (trade policy, industrial discipline, preparation for war)
  • During the 2023 "stand-up strike," the White House maintained close contact to limit the strike and impose a sellout; Biden appeared alongside Fain
  • Fain functioned as a de facto member of the Biden administration (Export Council, state dinner, Biden authoring Fain's Time 100 entry)
• Preparation for world war is central to the growing together of apparatus and state
  • Fain's "Arsenal of Democracy" invocations; Biden's description of the AFL-CIO as his "domestic NATO"
• Fain's shift from Biden to Trump (especially trade policy) expressed the continuity of the apparatus's orientation to the state
  • Endorsed Trump's tariffs; boasted of UAW participation in USMCA discussions and work with Trump's trade representative
• The UAW's June white paper, "Trade and the American Dream," developed this corporatist program
  • "Build Here to Sell Here" would devastate Mexico's auto industry and destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs
  • Demands a "tri-national commission" of unions, governments, and academics — offering the apparatus as personnel for trade war and labor discipline across North America
• Fain and his defenders (including the Workers World Party) present the federal investigation as retaliation for a supposed anti-genocide position — false
  • The toothless UAW resolution on Gaza avoided identifying the genocide and appealed to Biden and Congress
  • The apparatus endorsed Biden and had ceasefire-demanding delegates dragged from the hall; delayed and restricted the UC anti-genocide strike
• Trotsky traced the underlying tendency in "The Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay" (1940): the "drawing closely to and growing together" of unions with state power

III. Trotsky's advice in the Transitional Program and its application

• In the Transitional Program, Trotsky explained that during periods of acute class struggle, the leading bodies of the unions "aim to become masters of the mass movement in order to render it harmless"
• During war or revolution, "trade union leaders usually become bourgeois ministers"
• Therefore the Fourth International had to "create in all possible instances independent militant organizations corresponding more closely to the tasks of mass struggle against bourgeois society" and, when necessary, face "a direct break with the conservative apparatus of the trade unions"
• This advice is now being applied concretely through the IWA-RFC's fight against corporatism:
  • Corporatism has long been the program of the social layer from which the pseudo-left emerged (e.g., 1979 Democratic Left hailing UAW President Doug Fraser's entry onto the Chrysler board, followed by concessions and 60,000 destroyed jobs)
  • The elevation of the DSA and Labor Notes milieu into union leadership develops this same policy under more explosive conditions — figures with "left" credentials are brought forward to contain opposition, rehabilitate the apparatus, and serve as policy advisers, preparing historic concessions and even threats of violence against revolutionary opponents
  • Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) is a model of this bureaucratic faction: after decades of demanding direct elections, TDU helped return the openly pro-Trump Sean O'Brien without opposition at the June convention, denying 1.3 million Teamsters any vote
  • TDU co-chair Antonio Rosario's Jacobin defense ("If you're against Trump… I am personally 100 percent with you. But TDU is not for that") defines TDU's function — not organizing class struggle but enforcing an anticommunist, nationalist bureaucracy
• The pseudo-left is not making a mere intellectual mistake but is the political expression of a definite social layer — privileged sections of the upper middle class whose material interests are threatened by a working-class movement
  • This is why the pseudo-left universally opposed Will Lehman; his demand to abolish the bureaucracy threatens their positions and their pathway into the capitalist state
  • The accusation that the campaign seeks to "destroy the union" identifies the union with the apparatus
• This organic hostility has developed enormously, with the pseudo-left now occupying responsible positions within the bureaucracy and the capitalist state itself
  • Zohran Mamdani: brought to office by popular opposition to inequality, then reassured Wall Street, made pilgrimages to Trump, and allied with Governor Hochul — "a process resembling Syriza in Greece on an American scale and at American speed"
  • During the NYSNA strike, Mamdani appeared on picket lines while aligning with Hochul, whose emergency orders facilitated scab nurses; his administration supplied police power while the bureaucracy isolated the strike
  • During the LIRR strike, Mamdani refused to support workers and directed commuters to strikebreaking shuttle buses
  • The DC 37 agreement covering ~90,000 workers expires November 6, setting up a direct confrontation with his administration
• As the crisis deepens, workers' struggles will acquire an increasingly political character, bringing direct conflict with the state and the pseudo-left officials enforcing its policies

IV. The general strike demand and the work of the rank-and-file committees

• The general strike demand in Minneapolis anticipated this future dynamic
  • It arose spontaneously from below amid outrage over ICE killings and federal occupation — not from the unions, the Democratic Party, or any existing institution
  • The union apparatus intervened to prevent organized strike action; the Minnesota AFL-CIO and Minneapolis Regional Labor Federation nominally "endorsed" the January 23 protest but insisted workers obey no-strike clauses
  • The pseudo-left concealed this: Left Voice claimed the unions were "raring to go" and later hailed "notable concessions" when Trump tactically reduced visible deployment while ICE operations continued
  • Jacobin, the DSA, and Labor Notes blurred the distinction between pressure from below and the official apparatus, transforming a protest into "something approaching a general strike in words" while directing workers back to the same officials
  • The SEP's January 29 statement began from the decisive fact that the demand emerged "from below," and called for rank-and-file committees, emergency meetings, elected delegates, worker-formulated demands, and international links through the IWA-RFC
• Work of the rank-and-file committees:
  • Autoworkers: During the 2023 Big Three struggle, the Autoworker Network of Rank-and-File Committees fought for a program uniting workers across the US, Canada, and Mexico, opposing the bureaucratic limits on the "stand-up strike"
  • Fired temporary workers (early 2024) formed a committee demanding reinstatement and the unification of temporary/full-time, employed/unemployed workers
  • Ronald Adams Sr. investigation (2025): with his family's support, the IWA-RFC interviewed workers and specialists, exposed bypassed lockout protections and altered machine software, culminating in a public hearing and the demand for elected safety committees with authority to stop unsafe production — exercising functions abandoned by the apparatus
  • Dakkota, Chicago (2024): workers rejected four UAW-backed agreements; the committee established contact with Ford Chicago Assembly workers and called on them to refuse scab-produced parts
  • Nexteer, Saginaw (this year): ~1,300 workers rejected three UAW-backed agreements (96%, 73%, 55%) and voted 86% to authorize a strike the UAW refused to call; workers formed the Nexteer Rank-and-File Committee and declared "the workers will become the authority"
  • The bureaucracy secured ratification of a fourth agreement through collaboration with management (firing Antwiane Sanders, holding the vote inside the factory); but the committee continued fighting layoffs, victimization, and unsafe conditions (188 call-offs in extreme heat; near standstill at Ford's Michigan Assembly Plant)
  • A Nexteer worker compared the committees to the Committees of Correspondence that prepared the American Revolution
  • VW Action Committee (Germany): organizing against massive cuts, including up to 100,000 jobs at Volkswagen alone, which IG Metall is preparing to sign off on; its statement declares "Workers have no fatherland"
  • Postal workers: active committees in Britain, Canada, and the US; USPS Committee investigations into workplace deaths (four deaths over two years at the Palmetto center near Atlanta, exposing absent emergency protocols and defibrillators)
  • Postmaster General David Steiner declared the universal-service obligation "unsustainable," demanding power to cut delivery days, close "unprofitable" post offices, and raise prices — threatening most offices in the country
  • The postal unions are preparing to enforce this restructuring (NALC's rejected agreement imposed through binding arbitration; next contract may go directly to arbitration, denying workers even a ratification vote)
  • Defense of the Postal Service raises democratic questions (established during the American Revolution for circulating political information; Trump's attacks on mail-in voting link postal privatization to the assault on democratic rights)
  • In Minneapolis in January, hundreds of postal workers, residents, and students marched against ICE's use of postal property as a staging ground for raids

V. Lehman's second campaign and the response of the bureaucracy

• Lehman's second campaign proceeds at a far higher level of development than the first
• The apparatus recognizes the danger more clearly, giving the 2026 campaign a more direct and bitter character from the outset
  • The apparatus barred workers from the convention, suspended its own rules to block discussion, and cultivated an atmosphere of intimidation — yet Will secured the nomination and took the campaign into the plants
• The candidates' debate gave concentrated expression to the class divide:
  • Five candidates argued over who should administer the apparatus; only Lehman challenged its right to rule
  • Fain defended the "stand-up strike" as a success and boasted of collaboration with the Trump administration on trade
  • Every candidate except Lehman supported tariffs; he alone opposed the nationalist framework, explaining tariffs raise prices and divide workers internationally, and advanced rank-and-file committees, internationalism, and socialism
• The debate revealed the apparatus's attitude toward a genuine rank-and-file challenge:
  • Raymond Jensen (Region 9 assistant director, International staffer paid over $200,000 last year) posted an image of Will bound, gagged, and bleeding with a masked gunman aiming a rifle at his back
  • Confronted in the debate, Fain said "I don't condone that stuff," then added "If you're running for president, get ready, brother, because you'll be getting them every day" — announcing no action against Jensen
  • The message: threats of violence are a normal consequence of challenging the apparatus
• The bureaucracy feels under siege because it confronts an expanding wave of contract rejections, spontaneous job actions, and an organized rank-and-file opposition
• The death threat expresses the ruthlessness with which a privileged apparatus defends its interests when its power is seriously threatened
• But the answer cannot be retreat or adaptation — the defense of Will Lehman and his right to campaign must become the basis for deepening and expanding his support among autoworkers and throughout the working class

VI. Conclusion

• Hall urges passage of the resolution, anticipating an enormous development of all the processes reviewed: the eruption of the class struggle, the growth of the rank-and-file committees, the political collision with the bureaucracy and pseudo-left, and workers' increasingly conscious striving for a revolutionary way forward
• The conscious factor will be decisive:
  • It would be a serious error to assume the objective crisis will resolve itself, or that the party's role is confined to observing and commenting after the fact
  • Objective conditions create the possibility and necessity for socialist revolution but do not automatically provide the program, organization, and leadership required for victory
• The task is to intervene: identify and act upon what is objectively revolutionary; develop the committees as organs of independent working-class struggle; bring the historical lessons and political program of Trotskyism into the class struggle; and through this work build the Socialist Equality Party as the revolutionary leadership of the working class

2. Numbers of dead and missing climb in Nepal catastrophe as new barrier lake threatens second flood

The death toll in the catastrophic flood that struck Nepal’s northern border region on Wednesday rose to at least 579 people as of 8 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time Friday. Another 1,924 are missing according to Nepal’s disaster relief agency. Five people have died in Tibet with 588 individuals reported missing.

The flood was triggered by a massive ice-and-rock avalanche from a glacier-covered Himalayan slope, a calamity that is inextricably linked to accelerating global warming and inadequate public preparation combined with decades of government neglect internationally.

Satellite evidence indicates that a large mass detached from a glacier-covered slope in Tibet and plunged into the valley below. The avalanche was so immense that it generated a seismic signal measured at magnitude 5.2 by instruments in Germany and by the United States Geological Survey.

The collapsing mass descended through the valley, gathering rock, earth and debris before blocking a river and creating a temporary dam. When water broke through or overtopped the obstruction, it sent a torrent of water, boulders and mud downstream through towns, settlements, roads and tourist areas on both sides of the Nepal-China border.

Those missing residents, workers and foreign tourists caught in isolated areas after roads and communications were severed. Hundreds of tourists were among those reported unaccounted for and the official estimate says that 517 are foreign nationals.

Meanwhile, the avalanche and landslide have created a barrier lake near the confluence of the Tsogyal and Purupqiangzangbu rivers. Chinese water authorities initially described the landslide dam as facing a “high risk of breaching,” as the blockage impeded river flow and impounded a rapidly growing body of water.

The lake was reported to hold roughly 3 million cubic meters of water, with as much as another 3 million cubic meters projected to accumulate in the following days. Such a buildup poses a grave threat because an earthen and debris-filled natural dam can erode suddenly, releasing accumulated water in a destructive surge downstream.

Chinese authorities judged the immediate risk from an overflow more manageable and permitted suspended rescue work to resume. This does not eliminate the underlying danger of unstable slopes, blocked rivers and saturated debris that remain in an area where roads, bridges and communities have already been battered by the first flood.

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), a Kathmandu-based regional climate and mountain research institution, warned that this new blockage is part of a wider hazard across the Himalayas’ river systems. The formation of temporary lakes can turn the initial avalanche into a prolonged emergency, leaving downstream populations exposed to a secondary sudden flood.

Search crews are working across terrain buried under mud, rock and destroyed structures, and the task is made more difficult by damaged roads, unstable ground and the continuing risk of further flooding. Numerous videos posted on social media show rescue workers pulling and carrying mud-covered survivors to safety.

The rescue workers have searched through the remains of communities engulfed by water and mud, seeking any survivors and recovering the dead. Those who escaped did so under conditions of extreme danger as a wall of muddy water, rocks and debris raced down narrow valleys, as depicted in social media videos, leaving little time to flee.

*****

Scientists have identified the glacial avalanche as the immediate trigger, but the broader cause lies in the accelerating destabilization of high-mountain environments under global warming. Saswata Sanyal, a disaster-risk-reduction specialist at ICIMOD, emphasized that the event was not unprecedented. 

*****

The responses of US and European imperialism to the unfolding crisis are themselves a measure of the negligence of the world’s ruling classes to the man-made disaster. The White House issued a statement on Wednesday that the US “extends its deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives in the devastating flash floods.” 

President Trump called the flooding “terrible” and said the US had contacted Nepal’s leadership. He further said that Washington would provide “anything” Nepal needs. The “anything” that Trump was talking about apparently includes a miniscule $500,000 for emergency shelter, relief supplies and water, sanitation and hygiene assistance through Catholic Relief Services. 

*****

Capitalist governments internationally have failed both to halt climate change, to prepare populations for its foreseeable consequences and, when the inevitable happens, they offer up a pittance in a desperate situation. The devastating flood, the mass death and disappearance of residents and tourists and the continuing threat posed by the barrier lake are all a concentrated expression of the failure of the capitalist system.

The emergency in Nepal and Tibet is a warning that the intensifying instability caused by the warming Himalayas is colliding with threadbare public infrastructure and the absence of an internationally coordinated response capable of preventing disaster.

3. Australian government pledges a miserable $5 million for Nepal-China flood victims

Amid the horrific scenes emerging from Nepal and China following massive flooding on Wednesday, the Australian Labor government has displayed the utter indifference of the imperialist powers to the plight of the poor and oppressed victims. 

Labor Foreign Minister Penny Wong accompanied empty statements of concern and condolence with a pledge of just $5 million to the rescue, recovery and relief effort. Describing that as a drop in the ocean would, if anything, risk overstating the contribution. Wong unveiled the pitiful spend even while declaring that the “scale of the destruction is devastating.”

The flood is one of the worst disasters in the region in years, if not decades. While the full impact is still emerging, entire villages were swept away. The official death toll in Nepal rose today to 579 and 7 in Chinese-controlled Tibet. However, with at least 2,478 people missing, the tragic losses are certain to rise.

The Australian government’s $5 million pledge is divided into $3 million for the emergency response and $2 million in food relief.

Even if Labor ultimately increases its contribution, the initial display of contempt will remain. Under conditions of thousands of people still missing and rescue operations ongoing, the assistance is obviously time critical.

*****

The miserable contribution is not an aberration but the continuation of a longstanding pattern under successive governments, including the current Labor administration that has been in office since 2022.

For instance:

* Following six tropical cyclones in the Philippines in late 2024, which affected millions of people, Australia announced $5 million in humanitarian assistance.

* Following the devastating Cyclone Ditwah in Sri Lanka in 2025, Australia initially announced just $1 million, subsequently increasing the response to $3.5 million.

* Across a succession of cyclones, floods, earthquakes and landslides throughout the Indo-Pacific in October–December 2025, the government announced that its combined assistance had reached only “over $14 million.”

*****

Labor habitually cloaks those exercises in imperialist foreign policy with references to its concern for the “Indo-Pacific family” and its supposed bonds of commitment to the welfare of the people of the region. The literal pocket change that it is grudgingly giving to the people of Nepal gives the lie to those claims.

In reality, Labor’s participation in global war, a central driver of humanitarian crises, is inextricably linked to its contempt for the oppressed. For almost three years, Labor has politically, diplomatically and materially aided the Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, in one of the worst war crimes of the 21st century.

Alongside insisting on the “right” of the Zionist regime to bombard Gaza and to kill tens of thousands, Labor directly aided Israel’s policy of using starvation as a weapon of war, suspending its already paltry funding to UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for feeding and providing aid to the Palestinians, in early 2024. 

There is no brick wall between the attitude of imperialist governments to the oppressed masses of the world and to the working class domestically.

*****

As the WSWS noted, the scale of the disaster in Nepal, and the increasing frequency of such events globally, underscores the impact of climate change. The Labor government has facilitated the continued expansion of Australia’s fossil fuel industry, approving new and expanded coal and gas projects while insisting that new sources of gas supply will be required for decades. 

In its May budget, Labor unveiled the biggest single cut to a government program in history, a $38 billion reduction in funding to the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) over four years. The policy will kick 241,000 disabled people off support and prevent more than 100,000 others from accessing it, in a brutal austerity measure that will claim the lives of some of the most vulnerable. In the same budget, Labor rejected calls for any increased tax on the super-profits of the coal and gas conglomerates.

4. Scottish prosecutors allege "terrorist connection" over Trump golf course protest, as juries throw out terror cases

An indictment released by the Scottish courts service this week reveals that seven people charged over a pro-Palestinian protest at Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Ayrshire are accused of an offense “aggravated by reason of having a terrorist connection”.

Seven people are charged over the March 8, 2025 action: Kieran Robson (aged 35); Uzma Bashir (56); Ricky Southall (34); Autumn Taylor Ward (22); Rebecca Sian Davies (29); John Moxley (58); and Dylan Chiaramello (24).

Their first appearance at the High Court in Glasgow, due on August 31, was adjourned to October. Robson, Bashir and Davies face an additional charge of attempting to “defeat the ends of justice”, with prosecutors alleging that they drove to and from the resort on false registration plates.

The 16-page indictment describes damage to a luxury golf course where non-residents pay up to £1,000 a round. The accused, it states, “did maliciously damage property there in that you did maliciously dig up turf on the golf course, spray glyphosate [weed killer] or similar substance on the fairways and greens, spray a building and signpost with paint, paint political and offensive slogans on the grass, score a political slogan into the turf, paint political and offensive slogans on a building, walls and pillars, damage a sprinkler system causing flooding, and damage a light”.

The “political and offensive slogans” were “Free Gaza”, “Free Palestine” and “Gaza is not 4 sale”—a reference to Trump’s plan to expel the Palestinian population and redevelop Gaza as a “riviera” resort. No terrorism offence has been formally charged. The Crown is attaching a terrorism aggravation to a charge of malicious mischief, permitting far longer sentences for what is, on the prosecution’s own account, the spraying of paint and weedkiller.

The timeline demonstrates a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Trump administration and Britain’s Labour government to label political protest “terrorism”. Within weeks of the action, Trump branded those responsible “terrorists” who should be “treated harshly”. On March 13, 2025, Scottish First Minister John Swinney met Trump’s son Eric and, the official note records, “offered reassurance that the relevant authorities would continue to take the incident seriously”.

5. El-Sayed drops his left rhetoric at Michigan rallies

Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed appeared at two campaign events Wednesday—an afternoon event in Ann Arbor, where he was joined by Michigan congresswoman Debbie Dingell and Maryland congressman Jamie Raskin, and a larger evening rally in Farmington Hills, where Raskin also appeared.

The events marked the latest steps in El-Sayed’s post-primary effort to reassure the Democratic establishment that he poses no threat to the party’s foreign policy of war and its subordination to the corporate-financial oligarchy at home. In the three weeks since his narrow August 4 primary victory over four-term congresswoman Haley Stevens, El-Sayed has downplayed the anti-war and anti-establishment themes of his primary campaign, which was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and Democratic “progressives” such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. Within days of his primary win, he appeared on “Meet the Press” and declared his support for the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. He also touted a “warm and inspiring” phone call from Barack Obama.

*****

At least as revealing as what was said at the Michigan rallies is what was not said. In the primary campaign, El-Sayed repeatedly attacked Haley Stevens for her support for Israel and the $30 million in funding she received from AIPAC. He made no mention of Gaza at Wednesday’s events.

Nor did he mention the U-Mich Eight, who face federal conspiracy charges for protesting against the Gaza genocide. One of his primary campaign staffers is among the eight students and campus workers framed up by Trump’s Justice Department.

He called the criminal US-Israeli war against Iran merely “dumb” at the Ann Arbor press conference. He was silent on the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. He said nothing about the pogrom against immigrants, the ICE paramilitary rampage or the deportation camps. Nor did he speak about Trump’s preparations to rig or overturn the midterm elections.

6. The human cost of the Paramount-Warner merger

The 118-page report submitted to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on August 18, 2026, by the Department of Economic Opportunity reads, in its cool bureaucratic language, like an autopsy of a still-living body. It examines the economic impact of Paramount Skydance’s proposed $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, a merger that would unite two of the six remaining major Hollywood studios under a corporate structure dominated by the Ellison family fortune and $82 billion in debt.

The projected losses are staggering: 10,360 job-years at risk in Los Angeles County, an additional 14,000 corporate job-years of consolidation globally through 2030, $1.26 billion in wages, $2.79 billion in economic value, $4.06 billion in business output and $547 million in tax revenue. These are the modeled consequences of management’s own plans, including Paramount CEO David Ellison’s pledge to extract $6 billion in annual cost “synergies” from the combined company.

But the most important finding is the baseline. Los Angeles County motion-picture employment averaged just 93,263 jobs in 2025, a record low and 35.7 percent below the 2022 peak. California has lost 52,016 film and television jobs since 2022, with 99.6 percent of those losses occurring in Los Angeles County. Major US film and television releases fell from 2,122 in 2022 to 1,629 in 2025. Cable series, historically a foundation of recurring employment, collapsed from 992 releases in 2019 to 579 in 2025.

The report’s estimates are, in fact, highly conservative. They focus narrowly on the direct economic consequences of the merger and do not attempt to measure the broader consequences of the Trump administration’s policies, including the assault on social programs, the escalating drive to war abroad, the disruption of global supply chains resulting from the war with Iran and the extreme volatility of the financial markets. The merger is intensifying a crisis already underway. That crisis is the product not of one corporation or political party but of the capitalist system itself.

Paramount Skydance plans to finance the acquisition with $54 billion to $57.5 billion in bridge loans from major banks, while Larry Ellison has guaranteed up to $45.7 billion in equity from his Oracle holdings. The combined company will begin with roughly $82 billion in gross debt and leverage approaching seven times EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization), placing it in junk-bond territory.

The merger is a financial operation to extract value through the consolidation and rationalization of two enormous enterprises. Workers are the raw material. The promised $6 billion in annual “synergies” is the mechanism through which management intends to service the debt and protect the Ellison family’s investment.

Corporate layoffs are only the beginning. Writers, crews, craftspeople, post-production workers and vendors will be hit as fewer buyers mean fewer “greenlights.” The merger combines two of the leading unscripted and talk-show producers, reducing competition for commissions. Approximately 895 creators hold exclusive deals with the two companies. When development budgets are cut, those creators and the workers around them lose work. 

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The WGA, SAG-AFTRA and Teamsters have issued warnings about the dangers. But statements are not a strategy. None calls for independent mobilization by workers. None challenges the domination of the industry by finance capital. None advances a program for workers to take control of production.

The WGA’s 2026 contract, negotiated without a strike authorization vote, guarantees labor peace through 2030, precisely as AI-driven restructuring accelerates.

The union bureaucracies cannot be explained simply as weak or mistaken organizations. Their officials’ careers, salaries and social relationships are bound up with the corporations and capitalist political parties. They constitute a privileged social layer whose function is to suppress the independent struggle of workers.

The Paramount-Warner merger is part of a broader transformation in which media, technology and state power are being fused under the control of a financial oligarchy.

Oracle, the company built on an early CIA contract and now providing cloud computing and AI infrastructure to the Pentagon and all 17 US intelligence agencies, is at the center of this process. The same corporate empire poised to control CBS News and CNN is embedded in the machinery of war, battlefield analytics, autonomous decision-making and global surveillance.

This is the Military-Industrial-Media Complex. Under this system, journalism and art are increasingly treated as data and commodities, subordinated to financial and geopolitical interests. A media empire tied to the White House and deeply integrated into the national security state will possess enormous power over news, films, historical narratives and the boundaries of permissible political thought.

The defense of artistic freedom, democratic rights and truthful reporting cannot be entrusted to billionaires, regulators or union bureaucracies tied to corporate management.

7. Germany: How to combat the far-right AfD?

Just days before the September 6 state election, Saxony-Anhalt, a small eastern German state of 2.1 million people, is moving to the center of media attention. For the first time since the collapse of Hitler’s Nazi regime 81 years ago, a far-right politician could become premier of a German federal state.

According to the latest Infratest-Dimap poll, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) holds a commanding lead with 42 percent, ahead of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) on 22 percent, the Left Party on 11 percent and the Social Democrats (SPD) on 8 percent. The Greens, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) and the Liberal Democrats (FDP) are all fighting to clear the threshold for entry into the state parliament. Whether the AfD’s lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, becomes the new state premier depends on how many parties fail to clear the 5 percent threshold and whether he receives support from other parliamentary groups. The BSW has already signaled its willingness to cooperate.

The leading media outlets and establishment parties are going to great lengths to present themselves as opponents of the AfD. On August 14, news weekly Der Spiegel ran with a cover photo of AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund under the headline “Germany’s most dangerous man.” The incumbent state premier and CDU lead candidate, Sven Schulze, insists on maintaining the so-called “firewall” against cooperating with the AfD, as does Chancellor Friedrich Merz. The Left Party is prepared to vote for a CDU state premier in order to stop the AfD. And the campaign organization Campact is spending more than €600,000 urging people to vote “tactically” and give their second vote to the SPD or the Greens to prevent an AfD single-party state government.

These are attempts—some naive, some deliberate—to mislead the public. Siegmund is not “Germany’s most dangerous man.” The fascist danger does not stem from the person of this 36-year-old businessman, who spent his earlier career studying the influence of scents on customers’ purchasing behavior. He switched from the CDU to the AfD 12 years ago, when he surrounded himself with neo-fascist advisers.

Nor does it stem from the person of AfD leader Alice Weidel, who rails against climate protection during prime time on Germany’s public broadcaster ZDF and demands the deportation of 1.3 million Syrian refugees and an end to the naturalization of migrants.

No one would take these bizarre figures seriously if they were not riding a right-wing wave that was generated not by themselves but by the ruling elites. They are the supply meeting a demand that comes not from the population but from the ruling class.

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The rise of the AfD can be understood only as part of the international shift to the right through which the ruling class is responding to the deepening crisis of world capitalism. Donald Trump in the United States, Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Marine Le Pen in France are all expressions of this development. Trade war, war, rearmament, social cuts, mass layoffs and the boundless enrichment of the wealthy are incompatible with democracy. They call for authoritarian forms of rule. This is why the ruling class, as in the 1930s, is once again turning to fascist parties.

The brutal sealing off of Europe’s borders to refugees, Germany’s return to militarism and war, the diversion of hundreds of billions of euros from social spending to rearmament, the devastation of the car industry, the decline of entire regions, the construction of a police and surveillance state and the downplaying of Hitler’s Nazi regime by right-wing professors have created the poisoned climate in which the AfD flourishes

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Invoking the “firewall” against the AfD serves to divert attention from this convergence of programs and political goals. The CDU will not hesitate to make common cause with the AfD once it judges the time to be ripe. The same applies to the other parties. 

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At the international level, the Merz-Klingbeil government has long worked closely with far-right figures, including Donald Trump, Giorgia Meloni and Volodymyr Zelensky. Zelensky glorifies Nazi collaborators responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands as national heroes. His government has banned left-wing parties and imprisoned the socialist anti-war activist Bogdan Syrotiuk on charges of high treason. The German government has even declared support for Israel to be a “reason of state,” although the Israeli government is carrying out a genocide against the Palestinians and includes fascist ministers.

For its part, the AfD will have no trouble forgetting its tirades against the “legacy parties” as soon as it obtains even a small share of power. It will likewise quickly abandon its criticism of the war in Ukraine, since it fundamentally supports Germany’s return to militarism and an aggressive foreign policy.

The AfD’s entire populist demagogy is designed to capture the growing anger over the catastrophic consequences of government policy and channel it in a reactionary direction. In doing so, it does not shrink from any political deception. The party, which has anti-communism embedded in its DNA, has indulged in nostalgia for the German Democratic Republic (GDR) during the election campaign. Siegmund has organized motorcades featuring hundreds of East German-made Simson “Schwalbe” motorcycles.

This has always been the method of the fascists. Hitler’s Nazi Party, whose goal was to smash the socialist workers movement, carried the words “socialist” and “workers’” in its very name. It agitated against international finance capital but, once in power, revealed itself as a naked dictatorship of capital. Hitler crushed the workers’ parties and trade unions while leaving the captains of finance and industry untouched, provided they were not Jewish. Rearmament and the exploitation of forced labour allowed them to pocket enormous profits.

Donald Trump, the real estate swindler and casino operator from the New York establishment, posed during his election campaign as a champion of the excluded and oppressed.

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This right-wing demagogy only finds a resonance because there is no serious opposition to war and capitalism from the left. The trade unions, which smother every act of resistance against wage and social cuts and co-manage the destruction of tens of thousands of jobs in a “socially responsible” manner, and the Left Party, which mouths left-wing phrases while pursuing, in government, the same right-wing policies as every other party, bear particular responsibility for the rise of the AfD. 

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Leon Trotsky once described fascism as the “party of despair” and socialism as the “party of hope.” A vigorous struggle by the working class would give hope to many of those who are now voting for the AfD out of protest and despair; and would transform the political situation. But such a struggle is being blocked by the Left Party and the trade unions. 

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The election program of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) for the September 20 Berlin state election states:

The struggle against the AfD therefore requires a break with all capitalist parties and the independent political mobilization of the working class on the basis of an international socialist program. It is time to oppose the bankrupt profit system with an egalitarian, democratic and socialist society.

8. What lessons must be drawn from Mélenchon’s warnings of a French neofascist presidency?

At France Unbowed’s (La France Insoumise, LFI) summer school, Jean-Luc Mélenchon made a significant warning on the emerging 2027 presidential election campaign. Noting that it will likely be a contest between himself and the neo-fascist National Rally (Rassemblement National, RN), he said: “France’s back is to the wall. In each voting booth, in each conscience, a personal choice will make history. What principle will prevail: individualism or everyone together, racial supremacism or collectivism?”

Stressing that large sections of the French capitalist oligarchy aim to install a far-right dictatorship, Mélenchon compared the situation to the 1930s. He pointed to the pro-Nazi hysteria that seized the ruling class after the 1936 French general strike, leading to the fall of the Popular Front government and preparing the collaboration with Nazi occupation in 1940:

The Republic is on fire and is breaking apart. But the dominant ones have other obsessions to propose to you. We see the great conversion of the right wing and the center parties to a unified ideological bloc with the National Rally. They are already there, all of them lined up … those who, seeing us advancing towards victory, are already starting to say: rather Hitler than the Popular Front.

The comparison between the bourgeoisie’s outlook today and its reactionary treachery 90 years ago is not exaggerated. The RN leads in every poll, driven by favorable media coverage. From Ukraine to Iran and France’s wars in the Sahel, a new world war is erupting. France and all Europe’s major countries, facing unsustainable levels of debt, are spending tens or hundreds of billions on war while imposing austerity policies rejected by an overwhelming majority of the population.

But the comparison between the bourgeoisie today and during the Nazi collaboration shows precisely why workers cannot entrust the struggle against neofascist dictatorship, austerity and war to a Mélenchon, who is a pro-capitalist politician. 

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In 1936, France elected a Popular Front government backed by bourgeois Radical, social democratic and Stalinist parties, and shortly afterwards, the 1936 general strike erupted. But the bourgeoisie used the services of the Stalinists to impose a return to work, making social concessions to workers in the Matignon Accords. It then took back these concessions with inflation and speculation against the state debt before repudiating them completely, after Marshal Pétain with the support of the entire ruling class imposed surrender to the Nazi invasion in 1940.

What is Mélenchon proposing faced with the grandsons of the bourgeoisie of 1940? He did not call for the mobilization of the class struggle or the transformation of society via a social revolution overthrowing capitalism. Based on his anti-Marxist populism, he proposed an election campaign oriented to the constitutional refoundation of the French capitalist state, passing from the Fifth to the Sixth Republic by introducing ecological planning at the regional level:

The citizens’ revolution proposed by LFI is a cultural revolution, a concrete change in the references society has. That is why our proposition of eco-regions is a central project for our Sixth Republic. The eco-region is the basis closest to the ground, articulated together with municipal governments, to do effective ecological planning.

Mélenchon insisted that this refoundation of the capitalist state would democratize it and stop the austerity measures through which the bourgeoisie responds to the budget and debt crises. He added, “We are the serious, responsible people. … We pledge, once we are in government, to get public finances back in order, because we are the ones who can do it, by finally imposing taxation on the tens of thousands of big fortunes and the multinational corporations who do not pay taxes.”

This policy, which avoids calling for the expropriation of the capitalist monopolies and major fortunes, is a political dead end in a struggle against neofascism and militarism.

If there is one unforgettable lesson of the 1936-1940 catastrophe, it is that the workers cannot seize the wealth of the oligarchy by using the capitalist state. Even when, faced with the eruption of the class struggle, the bourgeoisie temporarily beats a retreat, it returns afterwards with an even more violent and desperate policy. To preserve its wealth, it is prepared to trample everything underfoot, from the most fundamental democratic rights to its invocations of the “sacred honor” of the nation.

This is why the French bourgeoisie preferred Hitler to the Popular Front’s reforms in 1940 and why it is increasingly behind the RN today.

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Workers must organize independently, at the level of the rank and file, building the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC). This is the lesson of the union bureaucracies’ strangling of the 2023 mass strikes against Macron’s pension cuts, which unfolded amid a wave of strikes by millions of workers in Germany, Britain and across Europe.

Mélenchon limited himself at the time to raising once in a speech the possibility of a general strike. The union bureaucracies for their part, terrified by the mass protests that erupted against Macron, shut down the movement as soon as Macron’s illegitimate cuts were adopted. Turning his back on French workers’ class brothers and sisters across Europe and the struggle for the United Socialist States of Europe, Mélenchon adapted to the union sellout.

But for the working class to be able to struggle on a revolutionary perspective independently of the union bureaucracies, the defenders of such a perspective must first rally together. This cannot be done based on the pro-capitalist perspective of LFI. This is the task that the Parti de l’égalité socialiste gives itself, following Trotsky’s warning in the years before World War II:

What can save the situation in France is the creation of a genuine revolutionary vanguard of several thousand men, clearly understanding the situation, completely free from the influence of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois public opinion (“socialist”, “communist”, “anarcho-syndicalist”, etc.) and ready to go to the end. Such a vanguard will know how to find the road to the masses.

9. Postal worker Russell Scruggs Jr.’s ex-wife speaks out, backs call for rank-and-file inquiry into postal deaths

On November 15, 2025, Russell Scruggs Jr., a 44-year-old postal worker, died just weeks after starting his job at the United States Postal Service (USPS) Palmetto Processing and Distribution Center in Georgia. Coworkers told the World Socialist Web Site that Scruggs suffered a head injury after falling and hitting his head on machinery in the plant. Coworkers also reported that he complained earlier in the day that he was not feeling well and was denied a request to go home. 

His death was one of four at Palmetto since 2024—this June, Demarcus Little also died at the facility. Workers say the facility has no cell phone service, leaving employees dependent on management to summon help, and that supervisors called security before calling an ambulance.

His death also came one week after Detroit postal worker Nick Acker was killed on the job in a mail sorting machine accident.

The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee, part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), has initiated an independent, rank-and-file inquiry into these deaths, carried out by workers themselves rather than USPS management or the American Postal Workers Union.

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Barbara Scruggs, Russell’s ex-wife of seven years and mother of three of his children, spoke with the WSWS in support of the IWA-RFC’s independent inquiry and is encouraging Russell’s coworkers from Palmetto to come forward with any information.

“Russell was a hard worker, a great father, really loved his daughters, always provided for them and always provided for the household. He was just a really great person with a big, big heart,” she said. “Russell would give you the shirt off his back. He wanted to help everyone. He wanted everybody to live comfortably. He really loved his children and wanted to make sure they had everything they needed. And while we did separate, he always wanted to make sure that I wasn’t struggling to take care of them by myself. He still wanted to make sure that I was good and that they were good. Everybody loved him. He was always smiling, always laughing, just a hard worker. I remember at one point he had three different jobs just because he didn’t want me working while I was pregnant.”

She told the WSWS that Russell suffered from heart problems and that his doctor advised him to quit his old job at a furniture moving company to avoid heavy lifting. “He’d told me things would be getting better because he had a new job. He was always working. He hated having to change jobs and not being able to work due to his condition. He definitely took the [USPS] job to care for the kids.”

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Barbara, a former warehouse worker, knows the difficult conditions inside plants that workers are up against. “You never know who could be next. Workers have to stand up and do something about this, especially if you’re going to keep working there [at Palmetto],” she said. 

She addressed herself directly to the Palmetto workers. “I understand your position in the company. Of course, you don’t want your name out there. You need that job to provide for your family. But you also need a safe work environment. You need to feel that you’re important. You are the one there working in these conditions, and it needs to be safe so that you can go home to your family afterward. I would like for you guys to come forward and tell us what you know, about what happened to Russell,” she said. “Come forward so that we can make a difference in the work environment you are in.”

Barbara still has not been called by USPS, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) or the American Postal Workers Union (APWU). “I have not been contacted, no nothing. It was like, ‘Okay, he lost his life,’ and that was it. They [USPS] were not really caring about who he left behind, just not caring about him as a person at all. Even the steps they took after him falling, I just heard it wasn’t good. A couple people who witnessed it were encouraged to just ‘Go back to work, go clock in.’ 

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Barbara continued: “One of his children, seven, is too young to fully understand, but she knows he’s gone. They’ve had to go through three birthdays and Christmas without him. Russell’s birthday was in May, so we did celebrate it. They couldn’t sing happy birthday because it was just too much for them, but we did have a birthday cake and blow out the candles and got some pictures which they have on their nightstand. It’s just really hard. They’re still dealing with it. I’m still dealing with it because it’s so unexpected—you just never think in a million years this would happen. My daughter even asked, ‘Why my dad?’”

She made a final appeal for Palmetto workers to get in touch with the WSWS and to support the independent inquiry. “Please don’t be scared to talk, to come forward. This is someone’s life. He left children behind, and we just want answers. We want to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

10. Rodent infestations in Chile’s collapsed schools: A powder keg in the making

These conditions are a microcosm of the state of public education across Chile at municipal schools, schools administered by the Local Public Education Services (SLEPs), and subsidized private schools alike. The Pinochet constitution’s “subsidiary state” established the principle that the state does not provide for social needs. It devolves responsibility downward to municipalities with radically unequal tax bases, or outward to private operators who extract profit from per-pupil subsidies while minimizing every cost.

Across the length of Chile, from Coquimbo to the southern archipelagos, schools in working-class and rural communities are in such a state of decay that they were infested with rodents.

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The rodent infestations in Chile’s schools are not merely a matter of disgust and indignity. They represent a direct and potentially lethal public health threat.

While the rodents infesting urban areas are overwhelmingly the introduced commensal species (Rattus rattus, Rattus norvegicus, Mus musculus), this is not the case in rural settings. The primary reservoir of hantavirus in Chile is the long-tailed pygmy rice rat (Oligoryzomys longicaudatus), a native wild rodent found from Atacama south to Aysén, whose range overlaps with school buildings in rural or peri-urban settings. Moreover, research conducted in 2008 confirmed the Andes virus in urban Rattus norvegicus in the Metropolitan Region.

As of Epidemiological Week 31 of 2026, Chile had recorded 49 confirmed hantavirus cases and 19 deaths nationally, reaching a lethality rate of 39 percent. This is a dramatic deterioration from 2025, when 44 cases produced 8 deaths, a lethality rate of 18 percent. Argentina’s 2025-2026 epidemiological season, running from July 2025 to June 2026, accumulated 101 confirmed cases and 32 deaths, a lethality rate of 31.7 percent.

The Andes variant of the virus, which predominates in Chile and Argentina, is one of the most dangerous strains and the only hantavirus known to be transmissible from person to person. The standard transmission route remains inhalation of viral particles from rodent excreta, precisely the risk created when rodent feces accumulate in enclosed, poorly maintained school buildings, kitchens, storerooms and workshops.

The virus became international news earlier in the year with the outbreak aboard the Dutch expedition cruise ship MV Hondius.

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The conditions documented are not the result of one government’s negligence, but the cumulative impact of a system imposed by the Pinochet dictatorship and preserved by every administration since.

The Pinochet constitution established the “subsidiary state”—the principle that the state exists to facilitate private profit, not to provide for social needs. In 1981, education was municipalized, and the voucher system introduced in which funding was tied to enrollment and attendance rather than need. The dictatorship’s labor reforms resurrected unions that lacked even the limited defensive qualities of the reformist organizations of the previous period.

The Christian Democrat and Socialist Party administrations that followed did not reverse this architecture but built on it. A 2012–2013 National School Infrastructure Cadastre found an average deterioration rate of 20.3 percent. A decade and a half later, a new cadastre finds it at 22 percent, meaning the rate of investment has not even compensated for the rate of decay.

The 2006 student rebellion, the “Penguin Revolution,” demanded the repeal of Pinochet’s education system and an end to the privatization and inequality it fostered. The first Bachelet government responded with tear gas, water cannon and a presidential advisory council designed to co-opt and demobilize the movement from below.

The 2011 student uprising brought hundreds of thousands onto the streets under the slogan “Put an end to profit” (Fin al lucro) in education. The first Piñera government deployed the Carabineros; a teenager was killed. The Communist Youth, the Socialist Youth, student radicals Gabriel Boric, Giorgio Jackson and others worked to channel the movement back into parliamentary negotiations that produced nothing and brought them into the corridors of state power. Bachelet II’s “New Public Education” law, which created the SLEPs to replace municipal administration, was sold as a reform. But it maintained the same funding logic: per-pupil subsidies that starve schools in poor communities of resources.

Then in 2019 the largest mass uprising in Chilean history erupted, with millions chanting “It’s not about 30 pesos, it’s about 30 years” expressing the understanding that every party of the post-dictatorship order was complicit.

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The ex-student radicals in the Broad Front and the Communist Party again channeled the incipient revolutionary energy into the dead end of constitutional reform and to the parliamentary process—Boric, as a presidential candidate, was elected on promises that he would “bury neoliberalism” and introduce the most “progressive” constitution in the world. Instead he brought in austerity, slashed spending, funded the Carabineros, maintained the state of emergency against the Mapuche, and handed power to the Pinochetista Kast in an “orderly and exemplary transfer.”

Now Kast is accelerating the destruction while bringing in methods that belong to Chile’s former dictatorship. The “Protected Schools” law, rammed through Congress, is a mechanism for militarizing schools, placing armed agents of the state inside classrooms and granting them disciplinary powers over children. The fascistic Kast government intends to use brute force to deal with the social crisis consuming Chile’s schools and society at large. This will produce a social explosion that dwarfs all others.

11. US strikes on border and resignation of Sinaloa governor expose logic of Sheinbaum’s endless concessions to Trump

On Thursday, US Northern Command announced the use of an Army Multipurpose High Energy Laser to shoot down three drones in the Rio Grande Valley along the US-Mexico border late Tuesday and early Wednesday. If confirmed, it would be the first time a high-energy laser has been fired at aircraft the US military attributes to Mexican drug cartels.

The military would not say precisely where the drones were downed, which cartels they supposedly belonged to, or whether the shots were fired over US or Mexican airspace. 

None of this can be taken at face value. Six months ago, in February, the same class of laser system shot down a US Customs and Border Protection drone by mistake, forcing a shutdown of airspace around El Paso International Airport. 

The claims accompanying these strikes have the same character as the Trump administration’s assertions about the fishing vessels it has been bombing in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, where no evidence of drug trafficking has ever been produced. What is being established is not a counter-narcotics capability but a precedent: that US forces may fire weapons across the border.

The attack on Mexico came in the same week that Rubén Rocha Moya, the Morena party governor of Sinaloa, was driven from office as the result of a campaign launched by Washington. 

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Corruption is the pretext, not the motive. Trump has pardoned the Honduran ex-president Juan Orlando Hernández, convicted in the same New York courthouse of importing cocaine. His closest allies in the region—Noboa in Ecuador, whose family’s banana shipping operations have been repeatedly used to move cocaine; and officials of the Milei government in Argentina—have been implicated in trafficking without consequence. For decades Washington’s closest partner in Mexico was Genaro García Luna, convicted in Brooklyn in 2023 of taking millions from the Sinaloa Cartel while running Mexico’s security apparatus with US backing.

[President Claudia] Sheinbaum invokes García Luna’s conviction to accuse the opposition of hypocrisy. But the continuity runs directly through her own government. AMLO secured the release of former defense secretary Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos from US custody on cartel charges. García Harfuch, the current security secretary, was the protégé of García Luna’s right hand, Luis Cárdenas Palomino; his father ran the DFS secret police that spawned the first generation of cartel leaders; his grandfather helped orchestrate the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre with the CIA. 

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Over the weekend, Trump imposed 50 percent tariffs on $20 billion of Canadian goods; on Thursday he signed an executive order renaming Lake Ontario “Lake America,” following the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico last year. 

In the context of this major trade war, Mexican economy secretary Marcelo Ebrard stated the aim: to hold “the best position relative to all other countries.” Some 85 percent of Mexican exports still enter the US tariff-free. Meanwhile Sheinbaum made a point this week that she has held 21 calls with Trump—roughly one a month since taking office. The strategy is to trade everything else for market access.

Each concession invites the next. On Friday, The Trump administration objected to Mexico’s modernized trade agreement with the European Union, because it protects European food names—Parmigiano, feta, manchego—that US dairy producers call generic. 

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The Austrian bourgeoisie also believed it could manage Hitler by accommodation. On July 11, 1936, Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg signed an agreement in which Nazi Germany formally recognized “the full sovereignty of the Federal State of Austria” and both governments pledged non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. The price was that Austria declared itself “a German state,” amnestied the Nazis imprisoned for the July 1934 putsch and admitted the Nazi intermediaries Edmund Glaise-Horstenau and Guido Schmidt into the cabinet. Sovereignty was to be bought back in installments.

Schuschnigg’s own explanation of what came next is the most instructive. Summoned by Hitler to Berchtesgaden in February 1938, he hurried to complete a further package of internal concessions beforehand, so that he could show Hitler, in his words, that Austria had already made the maximum concessions “of our own accord” and could pay no higher price. 

Hitler’s method—at Berchtesgaden as at Munich seven months later—was to take what had already been conceded as the new starting point and demand far more. On February 12, Schuschnigg surrendered the Interior Ministry, and with it control of the police, to the Austrian Nazi Arthur Seyss-Inquart, and lifted the ban on the Nazi party.

The Austrian establishment pronounced itself satisfied. Vienna’s minister in Rome assured the US ambassador that Berchtesgaden had been “beneficial,” a reasonable compromise, and that Seyss-Inquart was loyal to Austria and no real Nazi. 

Berlin, meanwhile, had informed Seyss-Inquart that Gestapo agents were to have freedom of action inside Austria. The agreement guaranteed in writing 18 months earlier had already ceased to exist. 

On March 11, Schuschnigg was ordered to resign. The US chargé’s cable to Washington notes how in his last radio broadcast, Schuschnigg began to say the troops were ordered to offer “no serious” resistance to Germany and corrected himself mid-sentence to “no resistance.” The Wehrmacht entered the next morning unopposed.

The lesson is not that Mexico in 2026 is Austria in 1938, or that Sheinbaum is a far-right politician like Schuschnigg. It is that a national bourgeoisie, whose interest is to maximize its gains from the exploitation of the working class as it attempts to purchase its position through concessions to a far stronger imperialist neighbor will find that each concession is banked and the next demanded—and that it will not be spared in the end.

12. Moving tribute to Oscar Robayo, Montreal airport worker crushed to death amid systematic safety violations by subcontractor

 A photomontage tribute to Oscar Robayo, the worker killed at the Montreal airport.

Oscar Robayo, a 39-year-old ground handling worker at Montréal–Trudeau International Airport, was crushed to death Monday while performing a routine pushback operation on a passenger jet. The fatal incident occurred due to systemic violations of basic security protocol by the subcontractor Samsic, a French-based multinational conglomerate that has played a major role in an accelerating race to the bottom in working conditions in airport operations across North America.

In an initial report and a detailed interview with a co-worker of the deceased, the World Socialist Web Site exposed how Oscar was forced by the absence of an extension cable to stand close by the front wheel of the massive jet while it was towed into its departure position by a tractor. He was run over by the jet as the tractor driver tried to maneuver the plane away from a remote port. The co-worker reviewed a litany of violated safety procedures, broken equipment and corner-cutting by Samsic that contributed to the extremely dangerous working environment that claimed Oscar’s life.

“I used to work with Oscar and met him at Samsic when I started. He was a great friend, great at his job, a smart and happy person with such an amazing personality,” the worker wrote. “Accepted people for who they were and such a kind heart.”

The outpouring of sympathy and anger following Oscar’s death has found expression in a broad readership for the WSWS’s coverage of the tragedy, as well as numerous comments on articles posted to social media. In our initial analysis, we stressed the necessity of airport workers taking the struggle for workplace safety and improved conditions into their own hands by establishing a rank-and-file committee.

The deregulation of airport operations, triggering a race to the bottom in conditions for workers, has been spearheaded by the Liberal government. The trade unions have facilitated this process with their support for the  collective bargaining framework, through which they have partnered with ruthless subcontractors like Samsic.

This underlines the need for workers to mobilize independently in a political struggle to end the dominance of corporate profit over basic services like air travel, and the safety and well-being of workers responsible for providing them. They should expect no redress from the official federal and provincial investigations launched into Oscar’s death.

13. Behind CIA Director Ratcliffe’s secret trip to Russia: The Ukraine war spirals out of control

The first visit by a CIA director to Moscow since the eve of the Ukraine war comes as the NATO powers pour weapons, money and intelligence into an escalation that brings a direct clash with nuclear-armed Russia ever closer.

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In assessing Russian policy, it must be understood that Putin’s hatred of the Bolshevik Revolution, and of anything that tends to legitimize its policies, is a major factor in his interpretation of events. “Imperialism” is a concept that he cannot accept either ideologically or politically, because it undermines the legitimacy of the entire post-Soviet project.

Writing in 1938, on the eve of the Second World War, Leon Trotsky observed that the bourgeoisie “toboggans with closed eyes toward an economic and military catastrophe.” The same is true today. Facing mounting social, political and economic crises at home, the European governments see in war a desperate way out. All the relationships and mechanisms that previously prevented war are breaking down, and as desperation and recklessness rise, any incident could spark a full-scale war, or even a nuclear exchange, with little warning.

14. Sri Lankan government bans railway workers from using social media

The JVP/NPP government aims to suppress opposition to the deliberate running down of railway services and its privatization agenda.

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There is widespread anger over the state of the rail network. Last year’s disastrous Cyclone Ditwah caused severe damage to the Udarata (up-country) Railway, also known as the main line, impacting hundreds of thousands of passengers. Trains currently run on that route only between Colombo Fort and Rambukkana and between Nanuoya and Badulla. The service on the Matale route that passes through Kandy has been completely stopped.  

The number of daily train journeys in Sri Lanka, which was previously 410, is currently limited to 184 journeys, according to S.R.C.M. Senanayake, secretary of the Engine Drivers’ Union (EDU).

More than one-quarter of the roughly one million daily train passengers had used the Colombo–Kandy and Colombo–Badulla lines, but the damage—estimated by railway sources at more than $300 million—has remained unrepaired eight months after the cyclone because of inadequate funding.

Already burdened by the rising cost of living, hundreds of thousands of people, including government and private sector workers, have been forced to use more expensive and inconvenient forms of transport.

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Decades of underfunding and the deterioration of train services are part of a deliberate strategy to justify eventual privatization. 

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The social media ban is aimed at silencing rail workers and stifling opposition as the government prepares the next round of attacks on their jobs and conditions.

Social media platforms have become indispensable tools for workers to expose workplace conditions, share information about harassment by management, coordinate protests and build solidarity across workplaces. Workers and youth used social media extensively to organize the 2022 popular uprising in Sri Lanka that ousted the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government, and the uprising that ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh.

The lesson the ruling class has learned is that workers’ free communication is a threat to their rule.

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In the railway sector, successive governments have banned strikes, deployed the military against rail workers, and used essential services laws to criminalize industrial action. The social media ban is the latest attack on these workers’ rights.

15. United States: Fed chief sets the stage for interest rate increase

In what probably could best be described as an exercise in damage control, Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh has sought to dampen down fears in financial circles that he is not prepared to react to persistent inflation by raising interest rates.

Warsh had come under fire following the Fed meeting in July, after his remarks following a decision to keep rates on hold were regarded as not sufficiently clear on what his reaction to continuing inflation would be.

Delivering the keynote address to the Jackson Hole, Wyoming banking symposium yesterday, he sought to address those concerns.

There were two key sections of his address regarded as being crucial to his commitment to tackle this issue.

Setting out his principles, he said: “There should be no misunderstanding. The Fed’s price-stability objective of 2 percent, as measured by the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, is a firm, fixed target. Let’s be equally clear about another aspect of the objective: Price stability is not self-executing, nor is inflation necessarily mean-reverting. It is the Fed’s job to deliver stable prices.”

He took issue with concerns that a weakening of the labor market could indicate a slowing of the economy, maintaining that it was “consistent with full employment.”

But on the price-stability side of the Fed’s mandate, “the numbers are more concerning,” with the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, the PCE index, at 3.7 percent and the six-month change at 4.1 percent. The consumer price index (CPI) was also elevated.

“None of these measures are perfect, but they all tell a similar story: Inflation is running above our 2 percent target. So the Fed’s predominant focus right now should be on prices.”

And then to emphasize the point, he added that while the summer PCE and CPI readings had been “better than expected, they do not tell me that underlying trends have meaningfully improved.”

“Here is my standard: we must be confident that underlying inflation is moving to our objective, clearly and at sufficient speed,” he said. “Otherwise, we have work to do.”

There was a significant market reaction to these remarks. The probability of a rise in the Fed rate at its meeting next month jumped from 35 percent the previous day to 62 percent. The yield, interest rate, on two-year Treasury debt rose by as much as 0.11 percent points to 4.34 percent, a significant increase.

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If the Fed does raise rates at its September meeting, just two months before the mid-term elections, it could set up a clash with US President Trump, who relentlessly denounced former Fed chair Jerome Powell as a “numbskull” and a “moron” for not lowering rates.

He appointed Warsh in the hope that he would be more accommodating, and has said that while Warsh wants to lower rates, he is constricted by a “political” governing body. The continuing attempts by the administration to remove governor Lisa Cook are an indication he is working to try to change that situation.

One of the most discussed features of Warsh’s tenure so far is the abandonment of so-called “forward guidance,” where the Fed gives an indication of how it will react to changes in market conditions. He maintains that this creates the conditions where markets are not reflecting changes in the economy but are basing themselves on what they think the Fed might do.

Warsh used his speech to defend his opposition to forward guidance, saying it set up a “hall of mirrors.”

*****

Besides the possible conflict with Trump if rates are raised, there is already another conflict developing, in this case between the Treasury and the Fed.

This has arisen from the decision of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that purchases of long-term bonds could be increased from $2 billion to $4 billion per operation, and possibly even more, in an attempt to lower their yields.

This was denounced in a scathing op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal by long-time Wall Street trader Stanley Druckenmiller—a one-time mentor of both Bessent and Warsh. He said the market’s verdict on the announcement, as yield initially fell and then rapidly rose again, was “swift and correct.”

“This wasn’t liquidity management, it was price management—a mistake far larger than $4 billion suggests,” he wrote.

Druckenmiller then indicated one of the underlying issues—the demand by key sections of the financial oligarchy for attacks on spending for key social services and facilities.

“The long-term Treasury yield is the most important price in the world. It is also the only fiscal disciplinarian the US has left. Neither party will run on entitlement reform.”

So-called “reform” is the code phrase used by the oligarchs for a deep offensive against the working class.

*****

If the Fed, as indicated by Warsh, does go ahead with an interest rate increase at its next meeting—with at least three members of its interest-rate setting body indicating that they favored such a rise at the July meeting—it will conflict with the Treasury intervention at the long end of the market.

This is because the Treasury will finance its bond purchases by issuing more short-term debt under conditions where interest rates will be rising as a result of an increase in the Fed rate. In other words, the two economic arms of the capitalist state will be pulling in opposite directions—another expression of the deep-seated tensions and contradictions within the US financial system. 

16. Australia: Prisoner denied parole despite judge rejecting antisemitism claim

In a decision that smacks of intervention by a Labor government—essentially in defiance of a judge’s order—the Parole Authority in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) last week refused for the second time to release a young prisoner on parole.

Mohommed Farhat, 22, was initially due to be released on parole last December, having served 10 months of a 20-month prison sentence after being paid by people with criminal links to commit acts of arson and vandalism in Sydney in November 2024 supposedly directed against Israel.

Farhat’s parole was denied despite NSW Supreme Court justice Desmond Fagan writing to the Parole Authority to warn of a “serious miscarriage of justice.” This development points to the Labor government’s contempt for judicial rulings.

It also indicates a further unravelling of a farrago of lies and misinformation by the media, Zionist groups and the state and federal Labor governments to depict 13 such attacks, featuring spray-paintings of anti-Israel slogans, in Sydney in the summer of 2024–25 as antisemitic terrorism. The Labor governments exploited the incidents to impose far-reaching “hate speech” laws that seek to outlaw opposition to the US-backed Gaza genocide.

17. Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia

Australia:

Newcastle Coal terminal workers take industrial action
 

Canberra sonographers strike against Labor government’s real wage cuts

 

Scope disability support workers begin industrial action

 

FedEx workers hold two-hour strikes around Australia

 

University of Melbourne staff strike over pay and conditions

Bangladesh:  

Educators demand inclusion in Monthly Pay Order scheme

 

Outsourced public-sector workers demand permanent jobs

India:  

Bank unions plan nationwide strike action

Chennai sanitation workers continue protest
 

Punjab National Health Mission workers continue strike

 

Mumbai autorickshaw drivers begin three-day strike over Marathi rule

 

Haryana sanitation workers continue statewide strike

Pakistan:  

Faisalabad waste workers protest unpaid wages

Sri Lanka:  

Public health inspectors intensify industrial action

18. John-Paul Himka, leading historian of Ukraine, condemns prosecution of Bogdan Syrotiuk

Himka has supported Ukraine in the present NATO-backed war against Russia, and his political standpoint therefore differs from that of the World Socialist Web Site and Bogdan Syrotiuk. However, Himka denounces the Ukrainian regime’s “cult of Holocaust perpetrators” and has written a powerful condemnation of Syrotiuk’s prosecution and imprisonment.

*****

Dr. Himka: 

How can one continue to defend Ukraine as a democracy when someone is sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment for expressing opinions that in no way jeopardize Ukrainian security? I have written a long monograph on the war crimes of OUN-UPA:

• Ukrainian nationalists and the Holocaust
• Ukrainskie nacionalisty i Holocaust

I thank God that I am a Canadian citizen, where there is no official cult of Holocaust perpetrators and ethnic cleansers and where I am allowed to express my opinion.

I am an emeritus professor of Ukrainian history and have been publishing academic works on Ukraine for no less than fifty-five years. I was banned from entering Russia in November 2022. I have been active in Ukraine's defence in several organizations and have publicized Ukraine’s plight in leftist media:

https://spectrejournal.com/ukraines-geopolitical-precarity/

The kind of obvious miscarriage of justice that went on in your court does not make it any easier to defend my ancestral homeland.

19. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

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.