Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
17. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Australia:
Bangladesh:
India:
New Zealand:
Pakistan:
14. Campus police report sheds new light on suicide of University of Michigan researcher Danhao Wang
Working in Professor Zetian Mi’s laboratory since 2022, Wang stood at the forefront of research into ferroelectric nitride semiconductors. His April 2025 paper in Nature mapped their switching mechanisms for the first time. He had secured a faculty position at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, his alma mater, and planned to return in May to marry his fiancée. His ashes only reached his mother, his sole immediate family, nearly four months after his death.
Wang’s death came amid the prosecution of five Chinese researchers at U-Mich—Yunqing Jian, Chengxuan Han, Xu Bai, Fengfan Zhang, and Zhiyong Zhang—and Youhuang Xiang at Indiana University. The careers of all six were destroyed over the shipment of harmless laboratory materials. The University of Michigan and Indiana University terminated the researchers’ employment and revoked their visa sponsorships, exposing them to indefinite administrative detention by the Trump administration’s immigration police. Jian, Han, and Xiang were coerced into plea bargains and deported; Bai, Zhang, and Zhang had charges dropped after months of detention.
This political persecution of Chinese scholars is the policy of the Trump administration, with the collaboration of the Democratic Party and the university administrations. It continues and intensifies the China Initiative, a Justice Department witch-hunt launched in 2018 that targeted Chinese-American scientists and researchers through fabricated espionage charges. The purpose of the campaign is to whip up xenophobia as part of the drive toward war against China.
U-Mich withheld Wang’s name for two weeks, until the World Socialist Web Site first identified him on April 2. One week after Wang's death, on March 26, U-M President Domenico Grasso testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce at a hearing titled “US Universities Under Siege: Foreign Espionage, Stolen Innovation, & the National Security Threat.”
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On September 15, at the “Pro-Human Assembly” on AI in Washington, Steve Bannon—an organizer of Trump’s January 6, 2021 coup attempt, who once called for government scientists’ heads to be put “on pikes”—declared: “We should take all Chinese nationals and get them out of the labs and get them back to mainland China.” It could be done by “executive action,” he said, adding, “We can shut it down in 72 hours.”
Bannon spoke from a platform shared with Senator Bernie Sanders, who thanked the organizers for “bringing people of different political perspectives together.” Sanders remained silent as Bannon called for mass expulsions. Sanders’ “progressive” nationalism converges with the fascist right on the drive toward war against China. AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten also spoke.
Two days later, the same economic nationalism and anti-China chauvinism was on display at the UAW’s Community Action Program conference in Lansing. UAW President Shawn Fain and Democratic Socialists of America-backed Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed attacked Trump for welcoming Chinese-owned plants onto American soil, attacking him from the right.
El-Sayed identified himself with General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis, declaring: “If I’m the Big Three right now, I’m pissed off as hell at Donald Trump.” He promised an American electric vehicle that would “beat the hell out of whatever China is putting out.” Fain denounced Chinese-owned production as “a slap in the face to America” and attacked China's “slave labor.”
The researchers who design semiconductors and the workers who manufacture them are bound in a single global chain of production. Wang’s theoretical breakthroughs are realized only through the labor of the industrial working class in the fabrication plants of TSMC, Samsung, Intel and SMIC. Defending GM, Ford and Stellantis against Chinese manufacturers serves the profits of the Big Three, not the interests of American autoworkers, and Chinese workers gain nothing from the ambitions of their own capitalist ruling class. Economic nationalism serves only to divide the international working class along national lines, pitting workers against one another to the benefit of corporate interests.
The persecution and scapegoating of Chinese researchers goes hand in hand with the victimization of immigrants. These attacks are the spearhead of the drive to destroy the democratic rights of the working class as a whole and establish dictatorial rule.
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality at the University of Michigan is demanding a full investigation into the suicide of Wang. The IYSSE is calling for:
● An independent committee of campus workers, researchers and students to investigate Wang’s death;
● The public identification of the officers who interrogated him, and the unredacted disclosure of every communication between the University of Michigan and the federal agencies;
● An end to the witch-hunts, the dropping of all charges against targeted researchers, and the cessation of surveillance and harassment of Chinese scholars;
● The mobilization of workers and students to stop the militarization of the campuses and the drive toward war with China.
9. While Trump and Netanyahu threaten the world at UN, class struggle grows on every continent
As the representatives of the capitalist nation-states gathered at the United Nations this week to plot escalating war, another force was making itself felt in a growing movement of the working class on every continent.
The 81st General Assembly was a festival of militarism and reaction. Donald Trump threatened to “annihilate” Iran, claimed Venezuela’s oil—“to the victor belong the spoils”—and “permanent control” over Greenland, and declared that “communism will never be coming to America.” Zelensky demanded escalation of the war against nuclear-armed Russia. Two days later, Netanyahu celebrated Israel’s wars and assassinations across the Middle East, denounced delegations that walked out as “moral cowards” and called for the overthrow of the Iranian government.
At the same time, the working class—united internationally by global production—is beginning to assert itself. Within this movement, there is a growing striving for unity across national boundaries.
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The basic lie promoted by the bureaucracy is that the capitalists and the workers in each country are united by a “national” interest. In reality, production has integrated workers internationally to an extent without precedent, while the organizations claiming to represent them help play off workers in one country against another. Mexican workers are told that American workers are their competitors; American workers are told that their jobs depend on tariffs against workers abroad.
The organizations of the pseudo-left work deliberately to disorient this leftward movement, defending nationalism and the capitalist state in a course that increasingly brings them into alliance with the extreme right. Bernie Sanders appeared on the same stage as former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on September 15 at the “Pro-Human Assembly” on artificial intelligence. Mamdani hosted Trump at Gracie Mansion the day before Trump threatened to “annihilate” Iran at the UN, disavowed having “encouraged” protests against Netanyahu, and presided over the arrest of 103 demonstrators by the NYPD as Netanyahu spoke.
But while these forces work to hold back the working class, its objective power, transformed by decades of globalized production, has never been greater.
1. Tensions between Türkiye and Greece escalate amid deepening imperialist war
One NATO member is carrying out a military deployment against another member of the same alliance. This escalation is a by-product of the imperialist war that is metastasizing from Eastern Europe to the Middle East and tending to merge into a single conflict.
2. Prize-winning film NAZA provokes a vitriolic response from Netanyahu and Israeli officials
The official campaign was accompanied by threats from far-right groups, calling for violence against the directors and their families and the demolition of their homes, chanting “Death penalty for traitors.”
In Calgary, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Zelensky signed a “100 Year Partnership” and a joint declaration on military-security cooperation that commit Canada to continue supplying the Ukrainian state with weapons and money for years to come. To wage imperialism’s war on Russia, Ottawa will increase Ukrainian drone production, help strengthen its cyber-war capabilities, and reinforce Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Successive Liberal governments led by Justin Trudeau and now Carney have provided tens of billions of dollars in military and financial aid to Kiev to fund the war and lined up with the European imperialist powers to systematically escalate it over the past 18 months.
In Banff, Zelensky, who continues to rule under martial law more than two years past the expiration of his electoral term, spoke before the Liberal cabinet.
In Toronto, he met with what were described as “senior executives of many leading Canadian companies, financial institutions, and investment funds”—that is, Ukraine’s imperialist sponsors.
Why Zelensky interrupted this busy itinerary to visit North Bay, a small northern Ontario city of 63,000 people raises a number of political questions—none of which were raised by Canada’s capitalist media.
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North Bay has only a small Ukrainian diaspora community, without, according to the information publicly available on its website, even a branch of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC).
It is, however, home to Yaroslav Hunka, the infamous Ukrainian veteran of the Nazis’ 14th Galizien Waffen SS Division who was given two standing ovations by a joint session of Canada’s Parliament on September 22, 2023, at which Zelensky gave a war-mongering address.
The publicly offered rationale for Zelensky to visit North Bay, a rationale provided only after the fact in Zelensky’s social media at 7:46 p.m. on Friday, was a meeting with more than 60 Ukrainian air force pilots who are being trained by the Canadian Armed Forces to fly F-16s and Saab Gripen fighter jets to advance Canadian and world imperialism’s plans to redivide Eurasia and its natural resources. All of the Ukrainian pilots appeared wearing black face masks for the cameras.
There are compelling reasons to believe that Zelensky would want to meet with Hunka, but also why both the Ukrainian and Canadian authorities would wish to keep this meeting a closely guarded secret. This is not idle speculation, but a serious and pressing question with significant political implications.
In 2023, Zelensky, the political representatives of the Canadian ruling class and the top brass of its military celebrated the Nazi Hunka as a “Canadian and Ukrainian hero” who had “fought the Russians in WW II.” Those who applauded Hunka, beginning with Zelensky, Prime Minister Trudeau, and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland (whose grandfather was himself a prominent Ukrainian Nazi collaborator), all know full well that the only Ukrainians who “fought the Russians” in World War Two were fascists; and that NATO’s puppet regime in Kiev is itself riddled with the political descendants of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
Yet when parliament’s honoring of Hunka provoked an international public furor, Canada’s political establishment beat a hasty retreat, for it put the lie to the carefully curated claims that Canada and the other imperialist powers are “defending” democracy in Ukraine. The invitation to Hunka was explained away as a “mistake” by the Speaker of the House and then MP for North Bay, Anthony Rota—only for it later to be revealed that Hunka had been invited to Parliament by Trudeau himself, on the recommendation of the far-right UCC.
For its part, the UCC argued that Hunka had been falsely maligned—defending, as it has during the more than seven decades that it has received the support and patronage by the Canadian state, Hitler’s Ukrainian nationalist collaborators and accomplices as patriots and heroes.
As the World Socialist Web Site wrote at the time, “The Canadian parliament’s applauding of Hunka is just the most egregious example of the fact that the escalation of the war has been accompanied by a systematic effort to rehabilitate Ukrainian fascism.”
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While NATO governments and the media are relentlessly stoking the war with the provision of long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia and claims of an imminent Ukrainian military victory, the Zelensky regime is mired in crisis as popular opposition to the war swells.
A majority of Ukrainians favour a negotiated peace, but their views find no expression in official politics, as all parties that oppose the war have been illegalized. Press gangs from the hated “TRC” military recruitment agency who round up any Ukrainian man without a connection to the ruling kleptocracy for forced mobilization to the front are increasingly being met with violent resistance, albeit of a politically disorganized and amorphous character. Much of the resistance comes from the wives, sisters, girlfriends and mothers of the men being forcibly mobilized.
To suppress opposition, the Zelensky government is making ever more draconian use of its authoritarian martial law powers, promoting fascist forces within the military-security state apparatus and openly celebrating in its nationalist mythology the far-right Ukrainian forces that collaborated with the Nazis.
This is exemplified in the state persecution of Bogdan Syrotiuk, a socialist opponent of the war who last month was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. A leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists, Syrotiuk has been convicted of “high treason” for publishing articles on the World Socialist Web Site that called for the unity of Russian and Ukrainian workers against the war and all the rival capitalist regimes that are waging it. In condemning Syrotiuk, the Ukrainian court specifically denounced his exposure of the Ukrainian state’s rehabilitation and glorification of Stepan Bandera’s OUN and other accomplices of the Nazis in their war of annihilation against the Soviet Union and the mass extermination of Europe’s Jews.
This glorification is ever more pronounced—a sign of the ever-narrowing social base of the Zelensky regime and the war, and its utter dependence on the support of Canada and the other imperialist powers.
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The urgent task for workers in Canada, Ukraine, Russia and internationally is to take up the fight against imperialist war and the capitalist system that breeds it. This means fighting for the freedom of Bogdan Syrotiuk, and linking the struggle to stop the war with the class battles over deteriorating working conditions, real wage cuts and dangerous workplaces that are breaking out in all of the major countries around the world. This movement must expose the criminal rehabilitation of Nazi war criminals and their modern-day defenders in the imperialist capitals.
5. The virtual unwrapping of Herculaneum papyri scrolls
The use of scanning and AI algorithms has made it possible to extract meaning from scrolls dating back to Greco-Roman civilization, which were previously indecipherable.
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The Herculaneum scrolls represent one of the most monumental discoveries in classical archaeology and constitute the only library from antiquity to survive in its entirety. The vast majority of the scrolls are stored in Naples, while six are held at the Institut de France in Paris and four at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
The final column of the scroll designated PHerc. 1667 mentions Aristocreon, who was the nephew and disciple of the major Stoic philosopher Chrysippus. Due to this reference, scholars think the text may have been authored by Chrysippus. The scroll is a Stoic philosophical treatise on ethics and human behaviour from the 2nd-century BC. There are no known works by Chrysippus in existence, with his work only known through fragments quoted in other sources.
The text comments on human nature: “we will inquire into something, but we will not grasp it, if in some way we depart from ourselves and from our own nature…”; on reason and wisdom: “Having… strained ourselves to the utmost through research and learning… possessing the same practical wisdom…”, and on Stoic Ethics: “such being the goods for us, even from the opposite evils there will be neither anything good—let alone beautiful—nor anything bad—let alone ugly—nor happiness…” It is an extraordinary feat of science that these texts can now be read and studied after almost 2,000 years.
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The importance and difficulty of the work was highlighted by the fact that all previous attempts to mechanically unwrap the scrolls since their discovery has led to their destruction. PHerc. 1667 had been reduced by half by earlier attempts to physically unroll it. In the 1980s, scholars used a mixture of gelatine and acetic acid in an attempt to soften the scroll only to see it crumble into an unreadable mass except for a few fragments.
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“This workflow does not imply that all sealed Herculaneum rolls are automatically readable. Performance depends on scroll general preservation state, scan quality, layer separation, deformation, local ink contrast and surface preservation,” their paper states.
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Seales’ work up to 2022 received traditional academic funding, including grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation, but he had reached a bottleneck as these sources weren’t able to supply the necessary funds needed for the complex work. In 2022 Seales met American technology executive and investor Nat Friedman and Israeli-American businessman Daniel Gross who suggested that the research could be funded through turning to tech entrepreneurs. The funds would be used for a series of competitions open to the public to solve various aspects of the research. In total $6,559,000 was raised, with Friedman contributing $2,250,000 while Elon Musk’s Foundation contributed $2,084,000. To the scientists’ credit all their findings were completely open and accessible on the internet to interested scholars who could contribute to the project.
Musk’s involvement is particularly revolting. While his contribution would be small change from his fortune, his basic orientation is the antithesis of science. He has promoted and funded the fascist right globally and regularly promotes bigoted and racist tropes such as the antisemitic Great Replacement Theory. The concept of race is a political construct that has been shown repeatedly as having no basis in science and is used to scapegoat and divide the working class. Musk’s contribution of a derisory amount to the Vesuvius Challenge doesn’t offset his overall anti-science focus.
Nor does Musk’s involvement detract from the cultural and scientific value of the researchers’ achievement. On October 12, 2023 the Vesuvius challenge announced that a 21-year-old computer science student from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Luke Farritor, had developed an AI model designed to detect subtle, microscopic variations in surface texture, known as “crackle,” left behind by the ancient ink. This enabled him to read the word “purple” written in ancient Greek. A few days later a student from Berlin Youssef Nader identified the same word using a different AI model he had devised. In February 2024 Farritor and Nader along with another student Julian Schilliger identified more than 2,000 characters making up 15 columns of text scroll PHerc. Paris. 4.
“Sometimes we take breakthroughs such as this for granted, but we should not. It took the combined efforts of many people over several centuries to discover, preserve, scan and now, finally, read and translate these scrolls. It is the privilege of a lifetime to be a small part of this,” Farritor told the University of Nebraska Lincoln online journal.
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It was known soon after the discovery of the scrolls in the 18th century that the Herculaneum library was devoted to Epicureanism, that is materialism.
Epicurus was a materialist philosopher who lived in Athens around 307 BCE. He considered that the universe consists entirely of indivisible material atoms moving through infinite empty space. He saw the soul as physical and made of atoms, it dissolves completely upon death; therefore, there is no soul surviving in an afterlife or divine punishment to fear. He thought that gods existed but that they were made of atoms and that they were detached from human society.
The researchers’ project of transforming the carbonised scrolls into a readable form is of decisive importance to Marxists. Marx wrote his doctoral dissertation of 1841 on “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature.” Democritus was a pre-Socratic philosopher who advanced an atomic theory of the universe.
Four years later in his Holy Family Marx recognised the seminal importance of Epicurus on the future development of materialism: “The metaphysics of the seventeenth century, represented in France by Descartes, had materialism as its antagonist from its very birth. The latter’s opposition to Descartes was personified by Gassendi, the restorer of Epicurean materialism. French and English materialism was always closely related to Democritus and Epicurus.”
René Descartes was a 17th century French metaphysical dualist philosopher and mathematician. Pierre Gassendi was a 17th century French mechanical materialist philosopher and scientist who is considered to be pivotal to the development of the modern scientific outlook.
Epicureanism was an important philosophy that influenced the development of the Renaissance and subsequently the Enlightenment. American founding father Thomas Jefferson considered himself an Epicurean.
Commentary on the virtual unwrapping of the ancient papyri fails to explain why the Villa of Papyri scrolls are the only extant ancient library.
The only Epicurean text still in existence is by Roman poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things). Lucretius was a contemporary of Philodemus. Stephen Greenblatt in his book The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began on the rediscovery of Lucretius’s work by the Italian humanist Poggio Bracciolini in 1417 at a German monastery explains the fate of ancient learning.
With the rise of Christianity in the Roman empire the relative tolerance of different philosophical and religious tendencies came to an end. Under this new regime Epicureanism became a proscribed tendency.
Christians undertook a slander campaign against figures such as Lucretius. Greenblatt cites the slanders spread by St Jerome who lived in the fourth century BCE. In his Chronicon (Chronical) written in 380 CE he stated “Titus Lucretius, poet, is born. After a love-philtre had turned him mad, and he had written in the intervals of his insanity, several books which Cicero revised, he killed himself by his own hand in the forty fourth year of his age.” Subsequent writers repeated and amplified the slanders aimed at discrediting Epicurean thought as promoting a libidinous lifestyle.
The Romans were known at the period of the Villa of the Papyri as lovers of books. Many wealthy Romans had extensive libraries and numerous public libraries existed in Rome and throughout the empire. Greenblatt describes the fate of the largest and most consequential library in ancient times in Egypt in Alexandria.
The library started in early 300 BCE under the Ptolemaic kings. It was a major repository of ancient culture. Figures such as the renown mathematicians Euclid, Archimedes and Eratosthenes were known to have worked at the library. At its height the library held half a million works.
Greenblatt explains the importance of the library: “It represented a global cosmopolitanism, a determination to assemble the accumulated knowledge of the whole world and to perfect and add to this knowledge.”
In the fourth century Christianity became the official religion of Rome. The Roman Emperor Theodosius the Great issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 CE, making Christianity the mandatory state religion and banning what he defined as pagan practices.
This sealed the fate of the Alexandria library as Christian mobs were given licence to hunt down and destroy paganism. In about 415 CE the Christian Patriarch Saint Cyril of Alexandria ordered the expulsion of the Jews and the seizing of their synagogues.
The great mathematician and scholar Hypatia, who worked at the library, was murdered in 415 CE for opposing the expulsion of the Jews. Her skin was flayed off, and her body was dragged through the streets to the outside of the city and burned.
The great Library of Alexandria had been largely destroyed by civil wars and fires centuries before Christian dominance, but subsequent religious friction targeted pagan intellectual hubs. In 391 CE, the Serapeum of Alexandria, which housed a daughter library, was destroyed by order of the Christian bishop Theophilus. In 529 CE, the Christian Emperor Justinian effectively closed the Neoplatonic Academy of Athens by banning non-Christians from teaching, forcing them to flee to Persia.
Greenblatt concluded, “Compared to the unleashed forces of warfare and of faith, Mount Vesuvius was kinder to the legacy of antiquity.”
6. Indonesian fires expose millions in South East Asia to toxic smoke
Forest and land fires in Indonesia have exposed more than 12.5 million people to hazardous smoke, closed schools and disrupted transport. Severe drought has intensified a disaster unfolding across landscapes made more combustible by drainage and commercial development.
Health Ministry figures between August 18 and September 21 recorded 174,694 cases of acute respiratory infection in seven fire-affected provinces since August 18, including more than 40,000 children under five.
The worst-affected regions include Sumatra and Kalimantan, Indonesia’s portion of Borneo, with substantial burning also reported in South Papua. The fires remain highly volatile. High-confidence satellite hotspots surged to more than 1,500 nationally on September 20 before falling to 688 the following day. Despite the decline, thick smoke continued to blanket Central Kalimantan, where visibility at Palangka Raya airport fell to around 400 meters.
More than 1.4 million students had been shifted to online learning by September 9. In Palembang, South Sumatra, approximately 250,000 students across 1,030 schools were affected, placing additional burdens on households without reliable internet access.
The disaster has crossed national borders, with Malaysia declaring a local emergency on September 4 in the Serian district of Sarawak, after its Air Pollution Index (API) exceeded 500. A scale between 201–300 is considered very unhealthy, with 301–500 creating severe health effects.
The API is an index derived from concentrations of pollutants in the air, microscopic enough to bypass lung tissue and enter the bloodstream directly. From there, the particles can trigger systemic inflammation, heart issues and long-term health complications.
A resident of Serian, in Malaysia told Firstpost News, “It’s hard for me to go out of the house. I only leave to buy vegetables like this, and then I go home. I just got out of the hospital because I needed a nebulizer. My throat was so itchy because of the haze.”
As of September 20, emergency operations in Indonesia have involved more than 64 aircraft and helicopters, and more than 54,000 emergency personnel, including water bombing crews, patrols, ground crews and cloud seeding. Japan sent three Chinook helicopters to assist, and Malaysia has pledged one aircraft and three helicopters with 52 firefighting personnel.
In Central Kalimantan on September 21, the smoke itself became so thick that water-bombing helicopters could not fly. Prolonged drought has complicated suppression efforts with authorities reporting difficulty finding water and the military drilling new wells. The Health Ministry reported sending nearly one million masks, hundreds of oxygen concentrators and thousands of medical workers to affected areas.
For affected households, lost earnings are compounded by additional medical expenses and unpaid care. At a September 10 public discussion, Yuli Suryantika of the Indonesian Women’s Coalition in Pontianak described falling incomes alongside higher spending on masks and medicines, increased cleaning and responsibility for sick relatives.
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The scale of the fires was already apparent before the peak of the dry season. Forestry Ministry figures show that some 202,000 hectares burned between January and July, compared with 137,000 hectares during the same period in 2019 and fewer than 93,000 in 2023—both major El Niño-driven fire years. Only the catastrophic 2015 season was substantially worse at the same stage, with around 600,000 hectares burned by the end of July.
The fire season subsequently intensified sharply during August, when 90 percent of Indonesia received little or no rain early in the month, and September. The costs associated with the 2015 fires were twice that of reconstruction following the 2004 tsunami.
Such extensive areas in Indonesia are combustible due to the drying up of wetlands and peat—a giant layer of organic material under the ground. Normally waterlogged, it becomes vulnerable to burning when the water table lowers. Once ignited, peat can smolder underground for days or even weeks, generating persistent smoke and resisting surface firefighting.
The causes for Indonesia’s fires are well established. Burning has long been used in Indonesia to prepare land for agriculture, including palm oil and pulpwood plantations. A 2016 World Bank report entitled “The Cost of Fire: An Economic Analysis of Indonesia’s 2015 Fire Crisis” concluded:
Man-made fires—more than 100,000 of them—were used to prepare land for agriculture and to gain access to land cheaply. Absent controlled burning measures or sufficient law enforcement, the fires grew out of control, fed by drought and exacerbated by the effects of El Niño. This vast economic and environmental crisis is repeated year after year, as a few hundred businesses and a few thousand farmers profit from land and plantation speculation practices, while tens of millions of Indonesians suffer health costs and economic disruptions.
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In a bid to placate public anger, Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto has ordered permit revocations and criminal investigations into corporations proven responsible for fires. As of September 16, police had reported 219 cases of illegal fires, 162 individual suspects and 95 corporations under investigation.
More than a decade on from the 2015 disaster, the Indonesian government has not only failed to prevent the use of fire for land clearing but has significantly exposed the land to further deterioration.
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Columbia University researcher Robert Field told NASA that underground fires would continue until sustained rainfall returned: “They’ll keep burning until the rains come in October or November.”
8. Stop conscription in Germany! Stop the Ukraine war! Freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk!
As Berlin escalates its confrontation with Russia, school students across the country are striking for the fourth time against the reintroduction of conscription.
11. Democrats accuse Trump of “appeasing” China in state visit by Xi
The Democratic Party congressional leadership responded to a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping with accusations that the fascist president, who had just threatened to “annihilate” Iran, was “appeasing” China.
Twenty-one Democratic senators, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, issued a joint statement Thursday accusing Trump of not “confronting China’s ... complicity in attacks against our troops or economic and military aggression against our allies.”
On the Senate floor the same day, Schumer said Trump had greeted Xi at his plane “sort of as a supplicant” and declared, “Trump needs to finally show some backbone.”
The senators declared that “America’s support for Taiwan’s self-defense is non-negotiable.” They demanded that the Trump administration expand the arming of Taiwan, declaring, “The Trump Administration must immediately deliver congressionally approved defense assistance to Taiwan, including the $1.3 billion in funds provided by this Congress, existing weapons sales and the $14 billion package of new arms sales approved nine months ago.”
They also called on the United States to “directly confront China’s renewed island-building in the South China Sea and increasing aggression in the East China Sea.”
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The Taiwan Enhanced Resilience Act, which Biden signed in December 2022, authorized up to $2 billion a year in military grants to Taiwan and $1 billion a year in weapons drawn from US stocks, and Biden ordered three such drawdowns worth nearly $1.5 billion.
Trump set the record for a Taiwan arms package in December 2025, notifying Congress of $11.1 billion in sales, including 82 HIMARS rocket launchers and 420 ATACMS missiles.
The $1.3 billion the Democrats cite consists of $1 billion for a Pentagon “Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative” and $300 million in military grants, both in the spending bill Trump signed February 3.
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The senators also attacked Trump for “greenlighting sales of high-end chips and manufacturing equipment to China” and for failing “to hold Xi accountable for support to Iran by Chinese companies that contributed to attacks against American soldiers,” which they called “an unconscionable dereliction of his duty.”
Schumer and seven other Democratic senators issued a statement Tuesday declaring, “We can’t let President Xi leave stronger than when he arrived,” accusing the fascist presidency of “weakness.”
Representative Ro Khanna of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, wrote in the Hill on Tuesday that “Trump has been appeasing his ‘friend’ Xi.”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Wednesday, “Taiwan is an ally, and hopefully Donald Trump is not going to give up Taiwanese autonomy or sovereignty or territorial integrity.”
These warmongering statements condemn an administration that has been more aggressive against China than any of its predecessors. The average US tariff on Chinese goods rose from 20.7 percent on the day Trump took office in January 2025 to 127.2 percent in early May 2025, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and stood at 47.5 percent in November, after truces reached in May and October.
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Xi arrived Wednesday, the day after Trump threatened from the podium of the UN General Assembly to “annihilate” Iran. Trump met him at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland in what the Associated Press called “a rare planeside greeting.”
On Thursday, a B-2 bomber and four F-22 fighter jets flew over Xi’s arrival ceremony at the White House, where Trump hailed “a truly great friendship” with Xi.
Trump hosted a state dinner Thursday night whose guests included Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Apple Chairman Tim Cook and the multi-billionaire Elon Musk. The White House list also named the chief executives of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and Chief Justice John Roberts.
“We’ve never gotten along better,” Trump said in his toast.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Wednesday, as Xi landed, that the trade truce reached in October 2025 would be extended by two months, to January 10, 2027.
The two leaders announced no agreement Thursday on advanced computer chips or on Taiwan. Xi told Trump that China hoped the US would “adhere to the correct position of opposing ‘Taiwan independence,’” Xinhua, the Chinese state news agency, reported Thursday.
A Bloomberg headline the same day read, “Trump, Xi Buy Time on Trade With Neither Able to Afford a Fight.”
The summit took place amid a deepening economic and political crisis of American imperialism. The 10-year US Treasury yield ended Thursday at 5.18 percent, higher than at any point since 2007.
The national debt stood at $40.07 trillion on Wednesday, and the federal deficit from October through August reached $1.97 trillion.
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The union apparatus has lined up behind the campaign against China. After Trump told Fox News on September 11, “If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I’d be OK with that,” United Auto Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain called the remark “a slap in the face” at a UAW conference in Lansing, Michigan, on September 15.
“We shouldn’t be doing business with countries that ... basically want slave labor,” Fain said.
At the same conference, Abdul El-Sayed, the UAW-endorsed Democratic nominee for the US Senate in Michigan, called Trump’s remark “a huge capitulation.”
As Trump met Xi Thursday, Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Republican Senator Bernie Moreno of Ohio used Senate speeches to promote their legislation banning Chinese cars from the US.
Slotkin called Chinese cars “surveillance packages on wheels” when the two introduced the bill in April. The UAW, the Teamsters, the Machinists union and the United Steelworkers back the bill, Slotkin’s office said Thursday.
One week after 1,200 workers at the Bradford White water heater plant in Middleville, Michigan walked out for the first time since 1978, the struggle is entering a decisive phase. The workers rejected two company contract proposals by margins of 96 percent before striking against decades of concession contracts. They are demanding wage increases, better healthcare, stronger retirement benefits, and safety improvements.
The strike comes amid a growing wave of contract rejections at Nexteer, Dana, and Bridgewater Interiors. These militant struggles are increasingly coming into conflict not only with management but with the UAW bureaucracy itself, which has carried out concessions for decades. As one worker told the World Socialist Web Site last week, 'There's been a concession every contract since 1978.'
UAW Local 1002 President Jessica Vasquez has announced that negotiations are set to continue. In the meantime, workers are trying to survive on $550 a week in strike pay — a fraction of their normal wages — while the UAW, which sits on a strike fund of nearly $1 billion, refuses to commit its resources to wage an all-out fight.
'We only get $550, it's not great,' a veteran worker said. 'The company was pushing us to 12 hours since August, preparing for this strike. You only got double-time pay if you worked 58 hours — that's how it is here. Most of us don't have pensions, so with our 401(k) they decreased the contribution from 4 percent to 3 percent. Then we only get holidays off in December, nothing else.
'With COVID, we really got nothing — we were 'essential.' All they gave some people was $70 for the COVID shot. Now you'd be lucky to afford any medication. For dental, we had a $1,000 deductible; now it's up to $1,200 just to get something cosmetic.'
One of the most explosive issue in the plant is safety. Workers described management running the factory with untrained office workers and supervisors as strikers man the picket lines, with potentially deadly consequences.
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An immigrant worker spoke about ongoing line speedups at the plant. “I came to America to build a better life for myself and my family,” he said. “But we’re struggling to survive.” After learning of Will Lehman's campaign for UAW president — which calls for building rank-and-file committees in every plant as part of an international movement — he voiced support, as did several of his coworkers.
A higher-seniority truck driver spoke about long hours and rising production demands. “Bradford White has turned into a multibillion-dollar conglomerate, with supervisors and managers retiring as millionaires within five to ten years. I’ve been here eight years. They had one person promoted to supervisor who got such a large bonus from the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) that he could retire a millionaire. We’re living paycheck to paycheck. Safety is poor. You had to work here ten years before you actually got vacation, and now they’re cutting it further.
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While the UAW apparatus headed by Shawn Fain claims it is fighting “corporate greed,” in reality Fain and UAW Region 1-D Director Steve Dawes have imposed a series of concessionary contracts. At American Axle in Three Rivers, Michigan, this summer, Dawes and Fain oversaw a sellout of the 10-day strike there, pushing through a snap vote on a contract that did not meet workers’ demands for restoration of past concessions.
At Nexteer Automotive in Saginaw, workers voted down three UAW-backed contracts in a row, only to have the UAW ram through a deal on the fourth vote using heavy-handed intimidation, according to workers. The UAW also helped engineer the firing of Antwiane Sanders, a Nexteer worker with 10 years’ seniority, after he criticized union officials at a contract meeting held inside the plant.
At the same time Bradford White workers went on strike, Fain and UAW endorsed Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed who delivered anti-Chinese tirades at the UAW Michigan Community Action Program conference in Lansing. Pickets noted that while denouncing China and supporting trade war neither Fain nor El-Sayed could find time to visit 1,200 workers on strike only about 60 miles down the road.
Since the last strike at Bradford White in 1978, workers have seen cuts to pensions, cost-of-living adjustments, and wages, along with the creation of an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP).
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The Bradford White strikers should immediately establish a rank-and-file committee of their own, elected by and accountable to the workers, to:
- Publish the workers’ own demands - This should include rank and file control over safety, the abolition of the tier system and an immediate pay increase to $35 an hour.
- Elect a rank-and-file bargaining committee to oversee contract negotiations.
- Demand full strike pay from day one, paid out of the nearly $1 billion strike fund that belongs to the members.
- Refuse any ratification vote unless the full contract text is released and workers are given adequate time to read and debate it.
The committee must reach out to workers at Bradford White’s other plants — in Rochester, New Hampshire, Niles, Michigan, and elsewhere — to prevent scab production, and to workers at Nexteer, Dana, Bridgewater, and the Big Three, to transform an isolated strike into a united offensive of the working class.
13. Mamdani’s cops arrest anti-Netanyahu protesters at United Nations General Assembly
As Mamdani’s police were rounding up anti-genocide protesters, Netanyahu was delivering a genocidal rant at the UN, calling the victims of Israel’s homicidal campaign throughout the Middle East “barbarians,” “monsters,” “butchers” and “the worst mass murderers on earth.”
Israel has killed 73,928 Palestinians in Gaza and wounded 175,030 since October 2023, Gaza’s Health Ministry reported Thursday. Israeli forces killed 1,408 of these after the ceasefire took effect on October 10, 2025.
Among those arrested were actors Susan Sarandon and Hannah Einbinder. In a post on Instagram after her release, Einbinder wrote:
“If the pictures of my friends and me getting arrested in protest of Netanyahu’s shameful visit to New York draw attention to anything, let it be to the devastating genocidal war Israel is waging against the people of Palestine and Southern Lebanon—to the settler attacks, the home demolitions, the bombing of people as they sleep… Let us not mistake the spectacle for the story: genocide is the headline, and it is time for it to end.”
Thursday’s arrests provide a cap to this week’s actions by the pseudo-socialist Mamdani administration, which have shown how thoroughly it has abandoned any pretense of opposition to the foreign policy of American imperialism.
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A class logic is at work in the politics of the DSA. Support for the largest and most heavily armed police force in the United States defines an organization that backs American imperialism and defends the capitalist state, under conditions of acute crisis that is driving the oligarchy to war and dictatorship. The DSA does not represent the working class. It speaks for privileged sections of the middle class that seek not the overthrow of capitalism, but a deal with the corporate oligarchy to give it a bigger slice of the profits extracted from the working class.
Supporters of the Socialist Equality Party distributed hundreds of leaflets to demonstrators on Thursday based on an article on the World Socialist Web Site that identified the DSA as an appendage of imperialism.
Members of the Greater Manchester Unite Community branch in northwest England have unanimously passed a resolution demanding freedom for Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk, jailed for his opposition to the Zelensky regime and the NATO-led war in Ukraine.
The branch members were shocked to hear that, since their previous call in May last year for Bogdan’s release, he has been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Unite is one of Britain’s largest trade unions with 1.2 million members. It operates a network of community branches that includes retirees, the unemployed and local activists.
Around 16 members of Unite’s Greater Manchester Community branch voted on September 22 to adopt the following strongly worded resolution, proposed by Unite member John Pearson and seconded by Paul Morrison. Greater Manchester is a conurbation with a population of almost 3 million.
Unite members bought four copies of the pamphlet “Free Bogdan Syroiuk—socialist anti-war activist jailed in Ukraine” at the meeting.
The resolution passed is as follows:
“Release Bogdan Syrotiuk, defend free speech!
Greater Manchester Unite Community Branch:
Recalls:
—its resolution of 28th May 2024 to add the Branch’s voice to global demands for the immediate release of Bogdan Syrotiuk, a socialist and anti-war activist arrested and charged with “high treason.”
Notes:
with horror that, after 2 years of pre-trial incarceration, Bogdan has been sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. This is tantamount to a death sentence. His health was poor when he was arrested. He has been denied urgently needed medical treatment while in prison. At the United Nations Committee Against Torture’s review of Ukraine in April 2025, experts cited overcrowding, inadequate access to food and water, the absence of independent medical examinations and a rising toll of deaths in custody.
—that the prosecution case rested entirely on six articles Bogdan wrote for the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), calling for working-class unity in Ukraine and Russia to end a conflict that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
Believes:
—that the imprisonment of Bogdan Syrotiuk is part of a wider clampdown to silence anti-war sentiment within Ukraine. More than 300,000 criminal cases have been opened against soldiers for desertion or absence without leave since 2022, with the majority in the past year. In 2025, 69 percent of Ukrainians told Gallup that the country should seek a negotiated end to the war.
—that the defense of Bogdan is not dependent on agreement with his views, or those of the WSWS on the war. The basic principle is that no government has the right to criminalize freedom of speech, opposition to war or socialist politics. An injury to one is an injury to all.
Resolves:
—to forward this motion to the court in Pervomaisk which handed down this politically motivated sentence and the court of appeal, demanding that the sentence be annulled
—to publicize Bogdan Syrotiuk’s case against the media blackout, circulating the petition among members for Bogdan’s immediate and unconditional release and to send a letter of support to the Free Bogdan campaign.
—to present this motion to each of the Trades Union Councils to which the branch is affiliated.
Proposed: John Pearson
Seconded: Paul Morrison”
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Unite Community branch members in Greater Manchester have again taken a principled stand that workers and trade union branches everywhere should follow.
The demand for Syrotiuk’s release must spearhead a campaign by workers internationally against NATO’s reckless and escalating wars. The NATO war in Ukraine, led by the United States, Britain, France and Germany, threatens to erupt into a direct military conflict between nuclear-armed powers. It is part of a developing global war encompassing the Middle East, Latin America, Africa and Asia, ultimately targeting China.
The WSWS urges every reader visit the campaign website FreeBogdan.org and act:
- Sign the petition, and add a statement of support in your own words.
- Write to the court, in your own language and in Ukrainian, using the letter-writing tool. If you have written before, send your letter again with the Ukrainian translation.
- Donate to the campaign.
- Post your support on social media, and share the campaign’s posts.
- Share the site widely with your contacts, in your workplace and in your neighborhood.
10. In full: Freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk! Stop political persecutions!
This statement was submitted to the World Socialist Web Site by Maxim Goldarb, the head of the Ukrainian “Union of Left Forces—For a New Socialism!” party. It was one of 11 opposition parties banned by the Zelensky government with the proclamation of martial law in March 2022. Maxim Goldarb has been persecuted and was forced to flee the country. To support the campaign to free Bogdan Syrotiuk, sign the petition, make a donation and submit a statement.
The “Union of Left Forces—For a New Socialism!” party protests the verdict against Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison on August 10, 2026, on charges of high treason. The court also ordered the confiscation of his property and the destruction of seized political literature. The defense filed an appeal on September 9.
The charges were based on his political publications, public statements and correspondence with the editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site.
At the same time, the investigation failed to prove espionage, the transfer of military information, sabotage or collaboration with the Russian armed forces. Moreover, a forensic linguistic analysis cited in the appeal materials found no calls for supporting Russian armed aggression in the publications examined.
This raises a fundamental question: Can a political stance, criticism of the government and anti-war socialist views serve as grounds for charges of high treason and a 15-year prison sentence?
We believe this issue cannot be viewed in isolation from the general state of political freedoms in Ukraine.
Since the outbreak of the full-scale war, Ukrainian authorities have drastically expanded the application of laws regarding high treason, collaborationism and other crimes against national security. According to UN data, by July 2025, approximately 20,000 war-related criminal cases had been opened, and over 2,200 people were being held in official Ukrainian detention facilities in connection with such cases. The UN specifically noted instances where individuals were prosecuted for performing work to provide humanitarian relief, utility or construction services and other work during the occupation—activities that were lawful under international humanitarian law.
The scale of the application of legislation regarding “collaborationism” is also enormous. Between December 2024 and May 2025 alone, the UN recorded 609 prosecutions under Article 111-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, 604 of which resulted in convictions. At the same time, the UN determined that some of those convicted were prosecuted for actions that could have been lawfully demanded by the occupying authorities under international humanitarian law.
We do not claim that every one of these cases constitutes political repression. However, the 20,000 criminal cases and the widespread application of vague provisions regarding “collaborationism” necessitate particularly rigorous oversight to ensure that criminal law does not become a tool for punishing political stances.
Simultaneously, there has been an unprecedented shrinking of the space available for legal political opposition.
In March 2022, Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a decree enacting a decision by the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) to suspend the activities of a number of leftist and other opposition political parties, including our own. The authorities justified these measures by citing national security concerns.
The same decision instructed the Ministry of Justice to take steps to ban these parties. Subsequently, a criminal case was initiated against Maxim Goldarb, the leader of the “Union of Left Forces – For a New Socialism!” party, on purely political grounds.
Responsibility for the resulting political and legal system lies not with the “state” in the abstract, but primarily with the сountry’s political leadership.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy personally authorized the suspension of opposition parties' activities. His administration governs under martial law, a state of affairs in which elections are not held and the opportunities for legal political competition have been effectively eliminated.
This does not, however, provide grounds to automatically label every criminal case as political. However, this provides every reason to demand an exceptionally high standard of proof in cases where an individual is charged with high treason solely or primarily in connection with their political activities.
The Syrotiuk case represents precisely such a test.
If publications, translations, interviews, political speeches, and international editorial work are transformed into evidence of “high treason,” a highly dangerous precedent is set: criminal law begins to define not what a person has done, but what political views they have expressed.
Democracy cannot be defended by destroying political pluralism.
The mere fact of disagreeing with the government cannot be declared high treason.
The concept of “collaborationism” cannot be turned into a universal tool for persecuting individuals whose political stance differs from that of the state.
Nor can society be expected to place unquestioning trust in the judicial system when the state simultaneously bans opposition parties and prosecutes individual members of the opposition.
We demand:
— that the verdict against Bogdan Syrotiuk be overturned if the prosecution is unable to prove concrete actions constituting high treason;
— that he be granted a full and independent appeal hearing;
— an end to criminal punishment for political convictions, journalistic activities, publications, and the peaceful expression of anti-war or socialist views;
— an independent review of how laws regarding high treason and collaborationism are applied in cases involving political or civic activity rather than assistance to an armed adversary;
— an end to the practice of using martial law to indefinitely curtail political pluralism;
— that the existence of a legal political opposition be made possible and the equality of political views before the law be guaranteed.
We are under no obligation to agree with Bogdan Syrotiuk’s political views. But that is precisely why his case is of fundamental importance.
Freedom of speech does not exist for those who say what the authorities want to hear.
Political opposition does not exist for those who agree with the government.
The right to hold political convictions exists precisely when those beliefs are inconvenient for the state.
A 15-year prison sentence for political activity and publications is an issue that demands a comprehensive resolution during the appeal process.
Freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk.
Freedom of political convictions.
Freedom for political opposition.
7. Australia: University of Melbourne meeting demands freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) club at Australia’s University of Melbourne last week held its Annual General Meeting (AGM), titled “Free Bogdan Syrotiuk! Join the fight against World War III!”
In the lead up, the IYSSE distributed thousands of leaflets on the imprisonment of Bogdan Syrotiuk, a Ukrainian socialist sentenced to 15 years in prison for opposing war. The meeting itself drew around 30 students, attending both in person and online, many of whom were joining their first IYSSE meeting.
Daniel, an IYSSE member, delivered a report on Bogdan’s persecution and how young people can take up the fight to stop world war. He explained that Bogdan was convicted on August 10 by a fascistic Ukrainian court for “high treason.” The only evidence provided were six articles for the World Socialist Web Site which opposed both sides of the NATO proxy war with Russia. Calling for the unity of Ukrainian and Russian workers against their oligarchic regimes has been declared a “crime.”
The war, Daniel explained, did not begin with Putin’s reactionary invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and was not unprovoked. “For three decades,” he said, “the United States and its European allies expanded the NATO military alliance across Eastern Europe and transformed Ukraine into an armed staging ground against Russia. Their aim is the military defeat and break-up of Russia to seize control of its vast natural resources, to dominate the Eurasian landmass, and to complete the encirclement of China.”
Daniel emphasised that this conflict was inseparable from the broader eruption of imperialist barbarism, driven by the historic decline of US imperialism and its efforts to maintain global hegemony through militarism. He stressed that we are living in the opening stages of a third world war, with fronts in Ukraine, Iran, and preparations for a US-led assault on China.
“Australian imperialism is a direct participant,” he said. “US forces now operate from 110 facilities on Australian soil. Military spending has risen from $48 billion to $60 billion, with a further $53 billion announced in April, while the anti-China AUKUS military pact will cost $368 billion. The working class is being made to pay. That is the significance of Labor’s $38 billion cut to NDIS disability services.”
18. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
"Peace for the world! Down with war!"
