Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: September 28-October 4
- 25 years ago:
50 years ago:
75 years ago:
Britain evacuates Abadan as Iran oil crisis deepens
100 years ago:
Armed uprisings in Mexico against government’s secularization policies
2. US midterm elections: Growing opposition to Trump, as both parties support war and austerity
A Democratic victory in the midterm election, while demonstrating the mass hostility to the Trump administration, would not change the crisis of the capitalist system which is the driving force behind Trump’s policies. The Democratic Party, as a capitalist party and instrument of the financial oligarchs and the military-intelligence apparatus, defends the same social interests as Trump.
It is these social interests—the vast wealth of the billionaires, Wall Street and the corporate elite—which dictate the policies of the US government, regardless of whether it is the Democrats or the Republicans who are taking the orders.
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The midterms will register the anger of the population, and the Democratic Party will attempt to absorb it and divert it. But the crisis that produced the anger will intensify whatever the result, and it will drive the working class into struggle against both parties. The task is to give that struggle an independent political form: a movement of the working class, organized in rank-and-file committees and linked across borders, directed against the war and the social order that produces it.
3. Outpouring of sympathy for Moet McCullum, New York City transit worker killed on subway tracks
Hundreds of transit workers packed the Lawrence H. Woodward Funeral Home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, filling it wall to wall to honor the life of Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) conductor Moet McCullum. The 41-year-old mother of three was struck and killed by a D train on September 3 while working as a construction flagger on the tracks near the 161st Street-Yankee Stadium station in the Bronx.
Workers braved a weekend Noreaster rainstorm that brought flooding across the city to attend the wake and funeral. The overwhelming turnout reflected the deeply felt conviction among transit workers that her death was entirely preventable and due to years of cost-cutting and the erosion of safety standards by MTA management.
Many attendees wore custom-made T-shirts bearing McCullum’s image and tributes designed and produced by workers themselves. The Transit Workers Union (TWU) Local 100 union distributed pins bearing the words of Mother Jones, “Mourn for the dead, fight for the living.” While TWU honor guards stood watch and wreaths bearing the TWU and TWU Local 100 logos surrounded Moet’s casket, the outpouring of sympathy and solidarity from co-workers far outweighed the performance of the union bureaucracy.
The genuine expressions of support extended beyond the funeral home. A GoFundMe organized for McCullum’s family two days after her death raised nearly $22,000 from over 260 donations in 22 days. Most contributions were under $100, underscoring that it was rank-and-file workers, not union officials or politicians, who took up the collection to support her family. “No one goes to work expecting not to make it back home to the people who love them,” the fundraiser page text stated. “Moet deserved to make it home.”
In addition to being a mother, McCullum was also a grandmother, sister and sister-in-law. She left behind her mother Elizabeth, her twin sister Monet McCullum—also an MTA conductor—and three children: 19-year-old twin boys and a 21-year-old daughter with a 2-year-old child of her own. Her brother-in-law, Thomas Tyrell, told the New York Daily News in the days after her death, “We just want justice and the truth... There’s just no way a person can go to work and just [get] killed at work.” Her twin sister wrote on Facebook, “I’m sooo hurt, angry and confused. My heart is literally shattered into pieces.”
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TWU Local 100 President John Chiarello attended the wake Friday, telling the gathering, “God needed an angel.” The remark, which was dutifully reproduced on the union’s social media, completely papers over the injustice of McCullum’s death with vague religious nostrums. The union’s Instagram post noted that New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, State Attorney General Letitia James, MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber and New York City Transit (NYCT) President Demetrius Crichlow “paid their respects.” This only underscores the cozy relationship between the union bureaucracy and the very figures responsible for the conditions that killed McCullum.
Each of these officials bears responsibility, and the funeral took place in the midst of ongoing contract negotiations that make that responsibility starkly clear. The TWU bureaucracy, working with the Mamdani and Hochul administrations, has kept 40,000 subway and bus workers on the job without a contract since May 15. The suppression of the resistance of transit workers—long one of the most militant sections of the working class in New York City—is aimed at paving the way for sweeping austerity measures aimed not only at transit workers but the whole working class.
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The hundreds of transit workers who packed the funeral home in Brooklyn understand that McCullum’s death was not a mere “accident.” It was the product of an agency that prioritizes debt service to Wall Street over worker safety, a union bureaucracy that collaborates with management rather than fighting it, and a political establishment, from Hochul to Mamdani, that serves the financial oligarchy while workers die on the tracks.
The fight for workers’ safety requires building independent rank-and-file committees, outside the TWU apparatus and the Democratic Party, to conduct a genuine investigation into McCullum’s death. These committees must take up the fight for what workers need: wages that provide a dignified standard of living, benefits that protect their families, and working conditions that do not sacrifice their lives. Workers who want to build the independent investigation and the rank-and-file committees are urged to contact the WSWS today.
4. Mamdani’s Business Advisory Council: Billionaires advise the “Democratic Socialist” mayor
Who are the 15 members of the Business Advisory Council?
First, there are its four billionaires, who define the class character of a body officially presented as “diverse” and “pragmatic.”
Tony James, chairman of the private investment group Jefferson River Capital, is the former president and chief operating officer of Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager, which reported $1.35 trillion in managed assets earlier this year. Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index puts his net worth at $9 billion. James is among the most institutionally connected financiers in the country: chair of Costco’s board, co-chair of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, chair of Mount Sinai Health System’s finance committee, a Biden appointee to the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, and a former Port Authority commissioner.
Scott Rechler, chairman and CEO of the real estate investment firm RXR, is worth $1.5 billion. RXR manages more than 31 million square feet of commercial property and 9,400 multifamily units concentrated in the New York region. His institutional connections are daunting: director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, former vice chair of the Port Authority, former Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) board member, and a board member of Northwell Health, the Hospital for Special Surgery, and New York University. He is also on the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) and the Real Estate Roundtable. Rechler reportedly raised concerns with Mamdani about the mayor’s “anti-Israel rhetoric” before joining the council.
Doug Steiner, chairman and founder of Steiner Studios, the East Coast's largest film and television production facility, is also a billionaire. Steiner’s family history is significant: his father, David Steiner, served as AIPAC president in 1992, resigning after a secretly recorded call was leaked in which he boasted of influence over American foreign policy and the selection of US political leaders.
The wealthiest member of the council is Hamdi Ulukaya, founder, owner, chair and CEO of Chobani. Forbes lists Ulukaya’s net worth at $11.3 billion. His business empire extends well beyond yogurt, including Chobani’s acquisition of coffee brand La Colombe and frozen food brand Daily Harvest.
Beyond the billionaires, some of the most politically significant members, including Antonio Weiss and Robert Wolf, come from the top ranks of private equity and investment banking. Weiss is a former Lazard global investment banking chief and senior Treasury official under President Obama. Wolf, founder and CEO of 32 Advisors, formerly led UBS Americas and its investment bank and currently sits on the Obama Foundation board. Priscilla Sims Brown is president and CEO of Amalgamated Bank.
Rafael Cestero is CEO of the Community Preservation Corporation and is a former city housing commissioner, appointed by Mayor Bloomberg.
John D’Angelo is the president and CEO of Northwell Health, New York State’s largest nonprofit health system and private employer, with 28 hospitals and more than 3 million patients. Pat Wang is the president and CEO of Healthfirst, a nonprofit insurer with roughly 2 million members. He chairs the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Despite the “nonprofit” designation, these are massive institutions with extensive financial interests. Northwell Health reported revenue of $20 billion in 2025, and Healthfirst reported over $12 billion in revenue in 2024.
The council also includes venture capitalist Kevin Ryan (AlleyCorp, co-founder of MongoDB and Business Insider), Etsy CEO Kruti Patel Goyal, WNBA New York Liberty CEO Keia Clarke, restaurateur Marcus Samuelsson and luxury accessories entrepreneur Brandon Blackwood.
City Hall reportedly approached Bank of America’s New York City president José Tavarez, former American Express CEO Ken Chenault, and private equity executive Charles Phillips, who all declined.
The establishment of the Business Advisory Council is consistent with Mamdani’s record since taking office. Workers and young people brought him to power seeking relief from soaring rents and living costs and a means of opposing Trump’s attacks on immigrants and democratic rights, his assault on social programs, and his foreign policy of war and genocide. Mamdani and the DSA promised to lead a rebellion against the Democratic Party establishment and end the Democrats’ complicity with Trump and the Republicans.
5. German dockworkers reject contract for a fourth time
Workers at German seaports have rejected the fourth wage offer presented to them by the Verdi trade union working in conjunction with the Central Association of German Seaport Operators (ZDS). In a survey—the so-called “feedback round”—64.7 percent of those responding voted against the offer on September 14, i.e., 3,578 of the more than 5,500 dockworkers polled.The latest offer included a 3.4 percent increase in hourly wages retroactive to August 1 for a 12-month term, supplemented by an additional €200 in vacation pay and an increased annual lump sum of €416 for container handling starting in January 2027. The workers original demand, however was for an 8.2 percent increase and at least €2.50 more per hour.
The contract bargaining has been ongoing for six weeks, after the previous agreement expired at the end of July. The workers have already demonstrated their willingness to fight, undertaking two major warning strikes. The fact that nearly two-thirds of those surveyed have rejected the “compromise” for a fourth time is a slap in the face not only for the managers of the port operations but for the Verdi leadership, which now finds itself forced to initiate a strike ballot on an indefinite strike.
The strike authorization vote began on Friday and will last until October 1; the votes will be counted on October 2, 2026. However, the union wants to avoid an indefinite enforcement strike at all costs. On the Verdi website, it has already warned that such a strike would require “a quorum of over 75 percent of the approximately 8,700 members eligible to vote.”
The workers are ready to fight. This was already evident two weeks ago, when up to 11,000 workers in Hamburg, Bremen/Bremerhaven, Emden, Brake and Wilhelmshaven took part in the second 48-hour warning strike.
However, in order to achieve their more than justified wage demand, it is urgently necessary for dockworkers to organize themselves into independent action committees. They must join forces with their colleagues along the entire North Sea and Baltic Sea coasts and wage the struggle together—not only for living wages, but to defend every job and ensure decent working conditions, as well as to oppose arms shipments and the conversion of civilian infrastructure into military production.
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The fact that the Verdi leadership stands firmly on the side of German industry and the shipping conglomerates, which it allegedly opposes, was already evident during the last 2022 contract round. Even then, the mood was militant, and all rounds of negotiations broke down. Verdi responded by accepting a court-ordered settlement to avoid having to call a forced strike.
The court ordered that strikes be suspended for another six weeks, and finally, after the tenth round of negotiations, Verdi pushed through the new contract. The agreed-upon increase of just under 8 percent over two years quickly turned out to be yet another real-term wage cut, as gasoline and food prices, in particular, were constantly rising. At the time, Verdi refused to hold a membership vote, arguing that the Federal Collective Bargaining Commission had “already approved 90 percent” of the outcome.
The same pattern repeats itself in all contract rounds where the Verdi union represents workers: at the postal service, Lufthansa, the public sector, in hospitals and daycare centers, and at the Berlin Transport Authority. Everywhere, Verdi uses limited warning strikes as a safety valve to subsequently push through a sellout. Now the dockworkers dispute is also threatened with the same pitiful end.
If Verdi were serious about enforcing its demands, it could have rallied the entire Baltic Sea coast. The maritime corporations in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are also organized within the same employers’ association, the ZDS. But the workforces at these companies were deliberately not called upon to join the strike, mainly in light of the current state elections in that state. At no cost did the Verdi bureaucrats want to risk a strike developing in parallel with the elections, one that could spiral out of control and slip beyond the unions’ control.
The Verdi officials themselves are members of the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party; i.e., they support the government’s war policies, which are increasingly militarizing all of production and society while simultaneously showering the oligarchs with billions in gifts. The working class bears the brunt of this in the form of low wage settlements and growing pressure at work, while their children face the threat of conscription and military service.
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The potential for a joint, international struggle is currently growing rapidly. Alongside German port workers, port workers in the Netherlands are also on strike. In Italy, port workers in Genoa, Salerno, and Livorno repeatedly refuse to load military cargo bound for Israel and explicitly link their wage struggle to the fight against war.
The wave of strikes is currently sweeping across the entire transportation and logistics sector in Europe. Italian railway workers are also on strike, as are air traffic controllers in Belgium, flight attendants at EasyJet in France and Portugal, aircraft mechanics at Icelandair, and workers at the state-owned Romanian Oil Terminal in Constanța on the Black Sea.
The international joint strikes by dockworkers could develop unprecedented strength and inspire the class struggle in other sectors. This would make it possible to paralyze the logistics and war machine that threatens all of society with destruction.
This, however, requires a socialist and international program, such as that advocated by the Socialist Equality Party. It calls for the formation of action committees that unite internationally, independent of the trade union bureaucracies. To this end, the International Workers’ Alliance of Action Committees (IWA-RFC) was founded.
6. Trump administration purges 760,000 from ACA Marketplace health plans, claiming fraud
The Trump administration announced September 22 that it has canceled the health insurance of 760,000 people enrolled in Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace plans, alleging that they were either fraudulently signed up or that enrollees simply “do not exist.” The mass disenrollment, unveiled at a White House press conference by Vice President JD Vance and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz, is the latest attack by the administration on healthcare and social programs that aims to drive workers and their families deeper into poverty.*****
The policy cancellations took effect August 31, weeks before they were announced. Many of those whose coverage has been terminated will only find out when they arrive at a pharmacy counter or emergency room registration desk.
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The purge of ACA enrollees comes on top of a steep decline in marketplace coverage that was already underway. After years of rapid growth due largely to the enhanced premium tax credits enacted under the American Rescue Plan Act and the Inflation Reduction Act under the Biden administration, ACA enrollment reached a record 22.1 million in 2025.
When the Republican-controlled Congress allowed the enhanced credits to expire at the end of 2025, enrollees faced an average increase of 114 percent in their premium payments to keep the same plan. The Democrats, who forced a 45-day government shutdown last fall supposedly to defend the subsidies, capitulated without winning anything.
Enrollment by those who pay their premiums, or effectuated enrollment, fell 13 percent to 19.2 million in February 2026, the first decline since Trump’s first term. By contrast, signups were down by only about 5 percent, or 1 million. The far larger drop in effectuated enrollment reflects the millions who selected a plan but could not keep up with the payments and were dropped after the three-month grace period ended March 31.
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The ACA purge cannot be separated from the sweeping attack on social programs set in motion by the The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA). The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the law’s Medicaid and ACA provisions would directly strip health coverage from 10.9 million people, a figure the American Medical Association has put at 11.8 million. Combined with the expiration of the enhanced subsidies, the number of newly uninsured is projected to reach 16 to 17 million by 2034.
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The administration’s crackdown on “fraud” in the ACA marketplace comes just weeks before the midterm elections, in which the soaring cost of living is a central issue. Democrats have posed as opponents of the ACA purge, with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi accusing the administration of using a “false pretext of fighting fraud to strip Americans of their healthcare.” But the destruction of the social safety net is the bipartisan policy of the ruling class.
The Democratic Party has been an active co-conspirator in every phase of the attacks on healthcare and food assistance. Signed into law by President Obama in 2010, the ACA was from its inception subordinated to the profits of the healthcare industry, forcing people without insurance to purchase policies from for-profit insurance companies.
When Trump issued executive orders in 2017 to undercut the ACA—scrapping cost-sharing reduction payments, allowing “association health plans” exempt from essential benefit requirements, and expanding employer exemptions from contraceptive coverage—the Democratic leadership’s response was to plead for bipartisan negotiations that would “stabilize the markets,” i.e., shore up the private insurers.
The Democrats’ answer to attacks on healthcare through cuts to the ACA and Medicaid is to call for a vote for their candidates in the midterm elections. They oppose mobilizing the working class against the Trump administration’s drive to plunge the working class further into poverty.
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Healthcare is a social right, not a privilege to be rationed by corporate insurers and canceled by government fiat. The fight against the assault on social programs cannot be separated from the fight against the capitalist profit system. It requires the independent mobilization of the working class through rank-and-file committees in every workplace and neighborhood, independent of both corporate parties and linked through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. The insurance companies, hospital chains and pharmaceutical corporations must be placed under public ownership and democratic control, as part of the socialist reorganization of economic life to meet human need, not private profit.
7. With Pennsylvania hardest hit, worst US measles outbreak since 1991 accelerates
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recorded 3,659 confirmed measles cases across 47 jurisdictions as of late September. Public health agencies reported 171 new infections over the past seven days. Forty separate outbreaks account for 95 percent of all cases, totaling 3,478 outbreak associated infections. Hospital care has been required for 329 people, about 9 percent of patients. Unvaccinated individuals or those with unknown immunization status comprise 95 percent of all reported cases. Only 17 cases have been imported by international travelers.
Falling vaccination rates are driving this national resurgence. Two-dose MMR coverage among kindergartners dropped to 92.4 percent for the 2025-26 school year, down from 95.2 percent in 2019-20. This decline leaves roughly 280,000 kindergartners without protection against the virus. Preventing community transmission requires a herd-immunity threshold of about 95 percent.
This outbreak marks the worst year for domestic measles transmission since 1991. Between 2000 and 2024, the entire quarter-century following domestic elimination, the United States recorded roughly 4,485 cases. The infections recorded in 2026 already equal 82 percent of that 25-year total. Combined, the 5,948 cases reported in 2025 and 2026 exceed the cumulative total of the preceding quarter-century by about 1,463 infections.
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Pennsylvania stands at the center of the national epidemic with 890 confirmed cases, adding 129 infections over seven days. It accounts for 24 percent of the national total, the largest share of any state. Lancaster County health officials have recorded 342 of these cases, mainly in the Amish population. Contrary to the media presentation, the majority of the state’s cases are outside Lancaster County. Hospital care has been required for 124 patients as of mid-September, and state authorities have recorded four measles-associated deaths.
Adults aged 20 and older comprise 38 percent of national cases, but public health scientist Jess Steier writes for CIDRAP that the adult share in Pennsylvania is closer to 70 percent.
This adult transmission chain has produced severe complications for infants. At least six babies in Pennsylvania have been born already infected with congenital measles, and two required admissions to intensive care. The American Academy of Pediatrics published clinical guidance this month because physicians are treating a condition they have never seen. Before mass vaccination, women had childhood immunity by the time they gave birth. These mothers had neither immunity nor the option of vaccination.
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A functioning federal public health system prevents localized cases from expanding into regional epidemics. Real-time surveillance alerts local health departments to transmission across state lines, allowing federal Epi-Aid teams to deploy before an outbreak spreads. An agency that has lost a third of its workforce cannot deploy teams to stop an outbreak at that stage.
8. US military makes preparations for assault on Cuba within “90-120 days”
The US Army Reserve has asked for preparations to supply the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) for a military assault against Cuba, “possibly needed in 90-120 days,” according to an internal Army message reported Friday by CBS News.
The report came three days after President Donald Trump used his address to the United Nations General Assembly to announce that Washington was seeking “a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba.” He declared:
It’s an absolutely failed State. It’s failing like never before and it will fall. Marco Rubio is handling the negotiation. He’s deep into negotiations with Cuba. Let’s see what happens. We’ll not allow a haven for foreign adversaries to threaten America on our own doorstep.
On Saturday, Trump responded to the CBS piece on Friday, telling reporters: “I’d say that Cuba and us will make a deal. I don’t think we’ll need the military. Cuba is failing very badly. We want to help Cuba. We want to open Cuba up to our people.” The emphasis fell on the last point.
The Pentagon’s preparations, together with the genocidal fuel blockade and sanctions, make clear that Washington is not seeking a compromise or diplomatic “deal” with Havana. The Cuban leadership has already put the island’s economy on offer. What US imperialism seeks, as it did in Venezuela, is direct control over Cuba’s resources, government and territory.
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The barbaric measures, more broadly, are designed take revenge for the 1959 revolution, destroy what remains of the revolution’s social gains and reimpose colonial slavery. The model is the puppet regime of Fulgencio Batista prior to 1959, when American politicians, businessmen and the Mafia freely enjoyed Cuba’s real estate, casinos and brothels.
“Anonymous leaks” like those in the CBS report are themselves an instrument of pressure on Havana. The purpose of the blockade was spelled out by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in August: “What we’re trying to teach them is there are no escape valves…. Every time they create a new mechanism in which they try to get out of the noose, we just close it off.”
Since the oil blockade began in January, infant mortality in Cuba has doubled, according to the UN. Not even during the Special Period of the 1990s, after Soviet aid ended, were conditions this severe. Cubans lie awake through sweltering nights without fans, unable to refrigerate food, besieged by mosquitoes and epidemics.
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Trump’s threats against Cuba, delivered in the same speech in which he threatened to annihilate Iran, were made with open contempt for international law. In August, UN independent human rights experts warned that the fuel blockade launched in late January and the stream of US sanctions against any foreign firm doing business with the island risk creating a “silent Gaza.” In other words, the Cuban population is being annihilated not by bombs but by the deliberate deprivation of fuel, food, medicine, electricity and water.
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The Army message reviewed by CBS lists six formations. They include a combat sustainment support battalion and an expeditionary sustainment command to run fuel, transport and supply across a theater of operations, an engineer battalion, a medical brigade, a forward resuscitative and surgical detachment to treat casualties near the front, and a military police brigade, whose missions include security and detentions. These are units for seizing and holding territory and imprisoning those who resist.
Earlier this year, according to CBS, US forces reconnoitered the seafloor and maritime approaches around Cuba, and planners considered an air assault by thousands of troops of the 101st Airborne Division. Moreover, the CIA has formed a Cuba task force to recruit spies and run covert operations.
The Venezuelan experience shows Washington’s aim. In October 2025, the New York Times reported that President Nicolás Maduro had spent months offering the US a dominant stake in Venezuela’s oil and gold. Trump rejected it because he wanted complete subordination. After years of devastating sanctions, US forces seized Maduro on January 3. A classified CIA assessment had concluded that regime loyalists, including Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, were best placed to keep the state apparatus under control. Since the US intervention, Rodríguez has maintained the Chavista apparatus in power, administering a US protectorate that has handed Trump control over the country’s finances, and both its domestic and foreign policies.
The Castroite leadership is similarly offering economic concessions while insisting that the ruling layer keep its privileges and serve as Washington’s main partner.
Whether Washington proceeds through a raid, an invasion or a CIA-engineered palace coup cannot be predicted; it is actively planning for a military attack and occupation. Trump’s advisers have told the New York Times that they believe the Cuban government “could be gone by the time of the midterm election in the United States in November.”
9. My Brilliant Career: Netflix’s caricature of a classic Australian novel
This year marks the 125th anniversary of My Brilliant Career, Miles Franklin’s landmark first novel and one of the enduring classics of Australian literature.
Written when Franklin was just 19, the novel is a semi-autobiographical account of a young woman coming of age amid poverty, social inequality and the unforgiving conditions of rural Australia. Its central character, Sybylla Melvyn, is fiercely determined to preserve her independence in a society where a woman’s economic security is largely dependent upon marriage.
That tension—between individual freedom and material circumstance—is at the heart of Franklin’s novel. It is also what makes the new Netflix adaptation so disappointing.
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Franklin completed her handwritten manuscript in 1899 and sent it to Henry Lawson, the foremost Australian short-story writer and bush poet of the era. Struck by its raw authenticity, he took it to London and helped secure its publication in Edinburgh in 1901.
The novel’s title is bitterly ironic. Franklin wanted it titled “My Brilliant? Career”, but the question mark was removed by the publisher. For a woman of Sybylla’s social position, a “brilliant career” effectively meant marriage—and if marriage was to provide an escape from poverty, it needed to be to a man of property.
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The reaction to My Brilliant Career in Franklin’s own rural community was more troubled. Local readers and neighbors interpreted the novel as fact rather than fiction, believing its characters to be thinly disguised portraits of real people. The resulting gossip and intrusion into Franklin’s personal life deeply distressed the young author. In 1910, she withdrew the novel and refused to allow it to be republished during her lifetime.
Franklin subsequently turned to journalism, publishing articles under various names. She spent a year working undercover as a domestic servant in wealthy households and boarding houses in Sydney and Melbourne, intending to use her experiences to expose the harsh exploitation of young women in the industry. Her manuscript on the subject, with the working title When I Was Mary-Anne, a Slavey, was rejected because potential publishers feared they would be sued.
Franklin moved to Chicago in 1906 and, from 1908 to 1915, worked for the National Women’s Trade Union League, assisting exploited immigrants and working with a group of talented women. She became the League’s press officer during the historic 22-week garment workers’ strike of 1910–11, which involved 40,000 textile workers fighting starvation wages and unsafe factory conditions.
Franklin co-edited the League’s journal, Life and Labor, writing extensive reports on industrial struggles, union organization and working-class conditions across North America. At the League’s 1911 conference in Boston, she was elected national secretary.
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Franklin relocated to London. A staunch anti-militarist, she viewed the war not as a heroic national defence but as a catastrophic slaughter engineered by imperial powers.
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Although Franklin retained a left-wing social-democratic outlook throughout her life she never joined the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). She maintained warm, lifelong friendships, however, with prominent communist writers such as Katharine Susannah Prichard, Jean Devanny and others.
When the Menzies Liberal Party-Country Party coalition government attempted to ban the CPA in 1950, Franklin opposed it, publicly warning that the outlawing of political parties and suppression of freedom of association posed a grave danger to the democratic rights of all workers.
Some of Franklin’s most powerful writings clearly express her anti-war convictions. In April 1952, she wrote to Jean Devanny: “I still am an independent in politics and am against war—all wars. I should be against even a war to emancipate women, because war never can be won. To contemplate war is to be defeated.”
Only one candidate running for UAW president has denounced Fain’s support for Trump’s trade war measures and called for the unity of workers across the border to defend jobs.
Will Lehman, the Mack Trucks autoworker and socialist candidate for UAW president, is running on a program to abolish the union bureaucracy and transfer power to the workers on the shop floor through rank-and-file committees in every factory, university and workplace. He has issued a statement titled “Defend Canadian autoworkers! For cross-border action to stop the closure of the Stellantis Brampton plant!”
In it Lehman declares, “Stellantis is moving to permanently close the Brampton Assembly Plant in Ontario, eliminating 2,200 jobs and threatening thousands more in auto parts. But Brampton is only the leading edge of a broader assault on jobs in Canada and internationally.”
Lehman notes that Unifor Local 444 President James Stewart said this month that Stellantis has given the union no clear information on how it plans to maintain the third shift at the Windsor Assembly Plant, restored only in February, or on the future of the Etobicoke Casting Plant. More than 1,000 jobs on Windsor’s third shift are at risk.
The Brampton closure is part of a global offensive, the statement declares. The German-based VW Group is moving to cut an estimated 90,000 jobs. Since the UAW signed its sellout contract in 2023, GM, Ford, Stellantis and the auto parts manufacturers have cut thousands of jobs in the United States. The reopening of the idled Belvidere plant, hailed as the centerpiece of Fain’s supposed “historic” contract, has been delayed another year, until at least June 2028.
“The transnational corporations are using the trade war, the shift to electric vehicles, and the drive toward imperialist war as cover to slash jobs and swell profits,” the statement continues. “In response, the UAW in the United States and Unifor in Canada are lining up behind their respective governments, fighting over which country’s workers keep their jobs and which get thrown on the street. In the name of ‘saving’ jobs, they are handing over even more concessions on wages, benefits and conditions.”
Lehman denounces Fain’s support for the tariffs and his celebration of the Jeep Compass transfer to Belvidere. “This is not a defense of American workers. It is a declaration of war on Canadian workers. It divides us and plays into the hands of the executives, who want us fighting each other while they pocket the profits.”
He continues: “There is no such thing as an ‘American’ or ‘Canadian’ car. Every vehicle is the product of the collective labor of workers in dozens of countries. We cannot succeed in any struggle if we allow ourselves to be divided.”
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“The working class has no country. Our enemy is not the worker across the border. It is the corporations, the banks, the governments, and the union bureaucracies that serve them. We will fight them together.”
What will be the next stage of escalation? Will Trump deploy ground troops or use nuclear weapons?
On June 11, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “we will be taking Kharg Island,” Iran’s chief oil terminal, “and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela....” Trump met his top aides in the White House Situation Room on July 14 to discuss sending ground troops to seize the island, the Journal reported the next day.
More than 50,000 American troops were deployed in the region, the military news site Task & Purpose reported August 30, and units of the 82nd Airborne Division have had their deployment extended to 12 months. On Sunday morning, Trump shared on Truth Social a video in which Fox News host Mark Levin said “there is no reason [Kharg] Island is off the table....”
The cease-fire that began in April collapsed in July. On July 7, after three commercial ships were attacked in the Strait of Hormuz, US forces bombed more than 80 sites in Iran, and the next day Trump pronounced the cease-fire “over.” Since July 14, the US Navy has enforced a blockade of Iran’s entire coastline, which under international law is an act of war.
US forces have attacked Iran repeatedly since, including on September 1, when they killed at least five people at a wedding in Kuhestak on Iran’s southern coast, among them a child, according to Iranian media.
Iran is a strategic battlefield in a developing global war against Russia and China. CNN reported Friday, citing unnamed sources, that satellite imagery from Chinese groups helped Iran carry out the July 17 attack in Jordan. According to the Journal, Trump “is reluctant to resume major combat operations” partly because the United States “wants to reserve dwindling munitions for other contingencies.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that France would send “soldiers, radar systems and defense systems” to protect Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu oil terminal on the Red Sea, which Yemen’s Iran-allied Houthis have attacked with missiles.
12. Philippine Senate rewrites impeachment rules to clear path for Duterte’s removal
On September 23, the Philippine Senate, sitting as an impeachment court, voted to set aside the Constitution’s requirement that two-thirds of all 24 senators—16 votes—were needed to convict Vice President Sara Duterte. It ruled instead that the number of votes required would be calculated using only those senators deemed “legally and factually capable” of participating when judgment is rendered.
The political faction of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has used the courts, the Ombudsman and the international machinery of prosecution to force four Duterte-aligned senators out of the impeachment court. Ronald dela Rosa is in hiding from an International Criminal Court warrant; Jinggoy Estrada and Rodante Marcoleta are imprisoned on non-bailable plunder charges; and Loren Legarda remains abroad under the pressure of an Ombudsman investigation.
The Senate has now written their removal into the arithmetic of the trial. Their exclusion lowers the votes required to convict from 16 to 14. Force out one more senator and the threshold falls to 13—the precise number that voted to change the rule.
Duterte is the clear frontrunner for the 2028 presidential election. In the latest Pulse Asia survey, 34 percent named her their preferred candidate, 20 points ahead of Senator Raffy Tulfo, her nearest rival. Conviction would remove her from office and permanently disqualify her from public life.
The Marcos faction is thus attempting to accomplish through prosecution what it cannot secure at the polls. It has altered both the composition of the impeachment court and the votes required for conviction, producing a constitutional crisis that now threatens a direct confrontation between the Senate and the Supreme Court.
The bitter conflict between the Marcos and Duterte factions is driven by the crisis that US imperialism has produced throughout the region.
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Every faction invokes democracy and the Constitution. In practice, the impeachment has assumed the methods of a mafia turf war. Senators are prosecuted, imprisoned or threatened until they either disappear from the chamber or supply the votes demanded of them.
13. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
