Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Macron threatens a state of emergency against mass mobilization in France
Yesterday, during a visit to Marseille, Emmanuel Macron raised the threat of imposing a state of emergency against the mass mobilization of youth and workers against his government.
At his press conference in Marseille, Macron referred to the mobilizations of October 17 and 24 and insisted that he could resort to a state of emergency if the movement continued to grow: “We are upholding the Republic and public order without a state of emergency. That does not mean that if things were to deteriorate, it is forbidden or taboo.”
The threat highlights the political tasks confronting the working class today. It confirms that the state apparatus and the ruling class are responding to this historic mobilization by planning a far-right dictatorship.
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Key question:
Why was there violence against shops on October 17 but a far calmer situation on the 24th? With about 3,700 arrests, the numbers can't explain the difference — and many workers are asking whether the security forces made use of the rioters on October 17.
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Résumé en français :
La menace de Macron est un signal de la direction que prend la classe dirigeante. Lors d'une visite à Marseille, Macron a déclaré que le gouvernement « fait respecter la République et l'ordre public sans état d'urgence », tout en ajoutant que si « les choses devaient se dégrader », l'état d'urgence n'est « ni interdit ni tabou ». Le point central de l'article est qu'il ne s'agit pas d'une déclaration neutre sur la sécurité publique — cela confirme que l'appareil d'État et la classe dirigeante répondent à la mobilisation de masse historique en préparant une dictature d'extrême droite.
La mobilisation est massive et légitime. La jeunesse mobilisée sur l'éducation, les « gilets jaunes » sur les prix de l'énergie et le pouvoir d'achat, et leurs revendications contre l'austérité, le néofascisme, les milliardaires et la guerre reflètent les vues de dizaines de millions de personnes en France — et, alors que les protestations s'étendent à l'Espagne, l'Italie, la Belgique, la Serbie, l'Albanie et la Grèce, de centaines de millions d'Européens. Le mouvement est dans son immense majorité pacifique et centré sur ses revendications.
L'état d'urgence est un véritable instrument de dictature, pas une simple formule rhétorique. Imposé pour la première fois par le Parti socialiste sous Hollande après les attentats de 2015, il suspend les droits démocratiques fondamentaux : perquisitions et saisies sans mandat, interdiction des manifestations et des réunions, détention et assignation à résidence, dissolution des associations, censure de la presse et tribunaux militaires. Ses dispositions sur les couvre-feux et l'interdiction des manifestations ont été inscrites dans le droit commun en 2017 et sont déjà utilisées contre les protestations actuelles.
Le parallèle historique est explicite. Avec Marine Le Pen en tête de tous les sondages pour la présidentielle, l'article établit la comparaison avec 1940, lorsque le Parlement français vota les pleins pouvoirs à Pétain et dissout la République. En 2026, de larges couches de la bourgeoisie tentent de porter l'extrême droite au pouvoir, et le président sortant envisage de remettre des pouvoirs dictatoriaux à un éventuel futur gouvernement du Rassemblement national.
La répression est déjà en cours de législation. L'article détaille deux projets de loi : une loi instaurant une « présomption de légitime défense » (un « permis de tuer » pour la police, selon Amnesty International) adoptée en première lecture en juillet, et un projet de loi « casseur-payeur » qui permettrait à l'État de prélever jusqu'à 10 000 € — y compris sur les allocations familiales et les aides au logement — à toute personne présente lors d'une manifestation où des dégâts matériels ont été commis, avec en plus la suspension des comptes sur les réseaux sociaux, la surveillance par drones et l'expulsion des étrangers.
Les allégations de Macron sur l'« ultra-gauche » sont un écran de fumée. Il a affirmé que la police avait été prise au dépourvu le 17 octobre par des « forces d'ultra-gauche » et la « délinquance ». L'article souligne que cela ne fait qu'intensifier la vraie question : pourquoi y a-t-il eu des violences contre les commerces le 17 octobre mais une situation bien plus calme le 24 ? Avec environ 3 700 arrestations, les chiffres ne peuvent expliquer la différence — et de nombreux travailleurs se demandent si les forces de sécurité n'ont pas utilisé les casseurs le 17 octobre.
La conclusion politique. La classe ouvrière et la jeunesse ne peuvent pas laisser la défense de la démocratie aux partis parlementaires ni aux bureaucraties syndicales, qui sont orientées vers la négociation au sein de l'État capitaliste. (Notamment, le groupe de Mélenchon a voté pour l'état d'urgence en 2015.) La tâche est de construire des comités d'action indépendants des syndicats, de préparer une nouvelle grève générale à l'échelle européenne, et de comprendre que la défense de la démocratie exige en définitive que la classe ouvrière prenne le pouvoir — en remplaçant l'Union européenne par les États-Unis socialistes d'Europe.
En résumé : les déclarations de Macron deviennent claires dès lors qu'on les comprend comme la classe dirigeante préparant des mesures dictatoriales contre un mouvement qu'elle ne peut pas vaincre politiquement.
2. Ahead of nationwide youth protests in Germany: Government and police prepare repression
Even before tens of thousands of school students, university students and young workers take to the streets across Germany on Saturday, the government, police and media have launched a campaign of intimidation. The protests against social cuts, dilapidated schools, rising living costs and the reintroduction of conscription are being denounced in advance as potentially violent and extremist.
This campaign is a serious warning. The ruling class is preparing to unleash massive police violence against young people in Germany, as is currently happening in France. There, well over 10,000 demonstrators have already been arrested, and numerous young people have been seriously injured, in some cases literally mutilated, by police weapons.
Behind this aggressive reaction lies the fear that the mass protests in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Albania and other countries will spread to Germany and merge with the resistance of the working class.
This fear is justified. Anger at the Merz-Klingbeil government is also growing in Germany. While hundreds of billions of euros are being poured into rearmament and war, schools and universities are deteriorating, rents and living costs are rising, and social gains are being destroyed. The reintroduction of conscription is intended to prepare the younger generation to serve as cannon fodder in a direct war against Russia that the NATO powers are provoking.
Tens of thousands of young people have already taken to the streets against conscription in several nationwide school strikes. Most recently, on September 25, 45,000 students in around 100 cities participated, according to the organizers.
Now the movement is expanding. The “genz-regelt” (Gen Z takes care of it) initiative originally planned demonstrations in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt am Main and Munich. Within a few days, independently organized protests were added in 18 other cities. More than 135,000 people have announced their participation on genz-regelt.de. The actual turnout remains to be seen, but the enormous response demonstrates the potential for a mass movement extending far beyond the organizers’ original plans.
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The events in France demonstrate what the state apparatus is prepared to do. The movement began in mid-September with school blockades against teacher shortages, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings. The government responded with massive police violence.
By October 13, according to the French Justice Ministry, 7,950 people had been taken into police custody, 85 percent of them minors. Thousands more arrests followed during the protests on October 17 and 24.
The consequences of the weapons used by the police have been devastating. On October 5, a police grenade tore off the left hand of 15-year-old Evan in Lens; he also lost several fingers on his right hand. Near Saint-Ouen-l’Aumône, a 14-year-old suffered severe facial and jaw injuries from a grenade launcher fired at close range. Several young people lost sight in one eye after being struck by police projectiles. Human rights organizations such as the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and Human Rights Watch condemned the police violence, and numerous investigations were launched against police officers over alleged abuses.
Deaths were also reported in connection with the protests. On October 17, a man died during the protests in Paris, and another died during the night of October 19 in the Châtelet area, where police operations had taken place.
Nevertheless, the movement continues to grow. More than half a million people demonstrated on October 17, and hundreds of thousands again last Saturday, despite bans, curfews and the mobilization of 70,000 security personnel. Workers, teachers and public-sector employees are increasingly joining the protests. The demonstrations are merging with opposition to attacks on wages and pensions, inflation and the Macron government’s war spending.
Similar struggles are taking place in Spain against unaffordable rents, in Italy against rising living costs and militarism, and in Portugal, Belgium, Greece, Albania and Serbia. The movement is developing internationally because workers and young people everywhere are being made to pay for the capitalist crisis, rearmament and war. Everywhere, these attacks are meeting growing resistance.
3. Chile’s Carabineros invade school. Workers must come to the defense of youth and students
The October 8 deployment of Carabinero special forces at the Manuel Barros Borgoño Lyceum, in which a 17-year-old student and his father were beaten and arrested, is the latest and most violent escalation in a coordinated offensive against Chile’s youth. The violent repression on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the 2019 multi-million anti-capitalist demonstrations is the culmination of a process built up over years.
According to the father’s account, three special forces officers “immediately began beating my son, a 17-year-old minor.” When the father reacted, he and a neighbor were beaten with retractable batons, sprayed with pepper gas in the face and mouth and detained.
The student described being choked, thrown against a wall, and beaten in the face and hands. “I told them I was a minor and that I wasn’t doing anything,” he recounted. “Because I did that, about four cops threw me to the ground, choking me, hitting me and even striking me on the head with a tear gas canister—which was fired point-blank, about 10 cm from my head.”
The operation capped a sustained campaign of harassment: mass application of the “Safe School” disciplinary process without concrete evidence, the suspension of two teachers who tried to protect their students and “preventive dismissals” of teenagers in the middle of the day. An early end to the school year has left 77 seniors without grades, meals, preparation for the PAES university admission test or a graduation ceremony. The principal, Victoria Corvalán, called in the Carabineros and has presided over what the student council correctly describes as a “logic of sanction and intimidation.”
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The most notorious precursor came on August 17 at the Rayen Mapu Lyceum in Quellón, Chiloé, where Carabineros ordered two students to strip in a classroom. One was made to remove his sweatshirt and shoes and have his shirt lifted before his classmates. The second was ordered to remove his trousers, sweatshirt, shirt and shoes, and then to perform squats in his underwear, in front of classmates, school staff and the police. The pretext was a reported phone theft. These methods belong to Chile’s former dictatorship. The strip-searches came four days after the enactment of the Kast government’s “Protected Schools” law. The incident was a probe: the courageous protest of students, parents and teachers was met not with accountability but with intensified assault, while the Kast government and the corporate media remained silent.
The list is growing. In late August, Carabineros entered the University of Concepción and violently arrested students protesting the administration’s indifferent response to an attempted student suicide. In September, a student at the San Mateo Bicentenary Institute in Pudahuel was run down by a Carabineros motorcyclist during a protest over teacher shortages; three students were detained. On October 8, Carabineros entered the Javiera Carrera Lyceum in Santiago and detained seven students, after the Coordinating Assembly of High School Students (ACES) had already denounced an earlier special forces entry there.
The pattern is identical: school administrations summon the police, the intervention is presented as a response to “violence,” and the result is the mass detention of minors and the criminalization of student organization.
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The events in Chile are part of an international process. In France, hundreds of high schools have been blockaded or closed, and police have responded with savage violence and mass arrests, with more than 6,600 people, overwhelmingly youth and minors, arrested in barely two weeks. Protests are mounting in Spain over housing, in Portugal among public sector workers, and in Germany against conscription. The same capitalist crisis drives austerity everywhere, and the same police-state response is being prepared everywhere.
The decisive lesson of the French movement is that student protests cannot defeat the state apparatus on their own. Their struggle poses the necessity of turning to the working class, while workers must come to the defense of the youth against police repression and link this fight to the mounting struggles over wages, jobs, housing, social services and war. The Parti de l’égalité socialiste advances the formation of independent committees of action in schools, universities and workplaces, elected by those engaged in struggle and independent of the trade union bureaucracies and the parties of the capitalist establishment.
This is the demand that must be raised in Chile: the independent mobilization of workers in the mines, the hospitals, the ports, the factories and the transport system, the class with the social power to shut down the economy and stop the state in its tracks.
Back-to-back campaign rallies in Michigan, addressed by former President Barack Obama Saturday and President Donald Trump Sunday, expressed the degrading and reactionary alternatives offered by the two corporate-controlled parties in the midterm election, only a week away.
Trump vented anti-Muslim bigotry, while his administration prepares to challenge the defeats widely predicted for Republicans in congressional and governors’ races. The Democratic ex-president offered only canned jokes and empty demagogy. He spoke of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election as a thing of the past and said nothing about the moves against this one, by the president he welcomed to the White House in 2016.
5. More indications of imminent renewed imperialist assault on Iran
The New York Times reported Monday that officials from Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan converged on Tehran for emergency discussions as the Trump administration and Israeli government threaten a renewed assault on Iran, including possible strikes either before or after the November 3 US midterm elections.
The preparations for a major escalation expose the gulf between Washington’s declarations of military success and US control of the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, a British maritime agency confirmed Monday that a tanker had been disabled by a projectile, while Iran threatens further attacks on vessels defying Tehran’s transit restrictions.
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The New York Times report on Monday’s Tehran talks highlighted the urgency around the likelihood of a renewed conflagration. Saudi Defense Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, Pakistani army chief Field Marshal Asim Munir and Turkish intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin met Iranian representatives. Later reporting confirmed that the delegations had held an initial meeting and agreed to continue discussions. Qatar had also sent mediators to Tehran on Sunday.
The three visiting states belong to the new Mecca Pact, also described as the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement. Established in August, according to EA WorldView, the framework links Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan in collective defense. Iran is their interlocutor, not a reported member. Available reports do not establish the pact’s detailed operational commitments or automatic military-response provisions.
The talks also addressed the Saudi-Houthi conflict, whose escalation threatens airports, oil infrastructure and alternative export routes. CBS News reported that the Mecca Pact governments’ diplomatic efforts express their immediate interest in containing the war that is destabilizing the region’s economic and security arrangements.
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On Saturday, President Trump celebrated the economic consequences for oil producers while dismissing the burden of high gasoline prices on consumers. At a Georgia rally, the falsifier-in-chief Trump declared: “So we’re making hundreds and hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars,” ignoring his advisors’ warnings not to bring it up. The facts are that ExxonMobil’s official second-quarter results recorded a doubling of earnings to $14.525 billion, while Chevron’s quarterly profit quadrupled to $12.1 billion.
Meanwhile, the price of regular gasoline averaged $4.28 a gallon on October 19, up $1.22 from a year earlier, according to EIA figures cited by Yahoo Finance. Higher transportation and energy costs are spreading through household budgets. A New York Times/Siena poll found 73 percent disapproval of Trump’s handling of gasoline prices and 65 percent disapproval of his handling of the Iran war.
The Democrats offer no opposition to the catastrophic war insanity of the Trump administration. While exploiting public anger over the rising cost of living and the decline of real wages, the Democrats support the imperialist war objectives against Iran, while criticizing Trump’s Russia policy with demands for a greater confrontation with a nuclear armed country.
The WSWS previously reported the senior House Democrats’ October 20 pledge to compel additional security, economic and intelligence support for Ukraine, alongside Democratic denunciations of Trump’s “energy ceasefire” with Russia. The Iran war and the US-NATO confrontation with Russia through Ukraine are interconnected fronts of an expanding world war supported by both capitalist parties.
6. Serbia: Vučić’s electoral defeat ushers in a new era of class struggle
Rarely have hopes and reality been so far apart as they were on Sunday evening in Belgrade. Following the electoral defeat of the long-standing ruler Aleksandar Vučić, tens of thousands across Serbia celebrated the election result with great enthusiasm. In the capital, the jubilant crowds brought traffic to a standstill in some places.
Two years after the collapse of the railway station canopy in Novi Sad, which triggered a wave of mass protests against corruption and arbitrary rule, the Students’ List—which emerged from the protest movement—won Sunday’s parliamentary election by a clear margin. It secured just over 53 percent of the vote, while Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) managed only 39 percent. All other parties failed to win seats in parliament. Voter turnout was exceptionally high at almost 70 percent.
But what happens now? What will the Students’ List do with its newly acquired power? It has only a rudimentary answer to this, consisting mainly of pious hopes. In a world characterized by escalating wars, social inequality, the rise of far-right parties and fierce class struggles, it dreams—according to its election manifesto—of “building an organized, fair and developed state where knowledge is valued and the law applies equally to everyone.”
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The coming period will not be characterized by reconciliation and harmony, but by the outbreak of the class struggle. Either the working class takes the initiative, unites across the Balkans and throughout Europe, and declares war on capitalism, war and exploitation, or the Students’ List will give rise to a new “mafia” that exploits the working class and offers itself as a proxy for the European Union (EU), the US or Russia. The Students’ List’s election manifesto does not even begin to provide an answer to these questions.
The programme consists of 11 points, divided into three sections.
The first section, “Serbia or the Mafia,” promises to combat corruption with the help of the institutions of the bourgeois state—courts freed from political influence, the public prosecutor’s office, and the police. The assets of politicians and civil servants are to be investigated, illegally acquired wealth confiscated, and abuse of office prosecuted. Government contracts, tenders and major projects are to be made public and rigorously scrutinised, while the public broadcaster (RTS) is to undergo far-reaching restructuring.
The second section, “Knowledge is Power,” calls for an end to the system of appointing people on the basis of party membership when filling posts in the public sector. Public sector jobs should be filled exclusively through rigorous, merit-based competition. Schools are to be modernised and textbooks made free for all primary and secondary school pupils. Start-ups, innovations, local entrepreneurs and farmers are to receive substantial financial support to ensure that Serbia does not remain a low-wage country for foreign corporations.
Finally, section three, “Serbia Grows with Us,” advocates a series of social and economic reforms, although it provides no details on how these are to be funded. For instance, employment contracts are to be limited to 12 months in future, rather than the current 24, in order to put an end to the political blackmail of employees.
Monopolistic structures in the import sector are to be broken up to ensure fair prices between producers and retailers and to safeguard agricultural supply. State housing programmes are to provide affordable housing for young families and professionals in occupations facing staff shortages. Medicine prices are to be significantly reduced, and basic medical care with doctors is to be established in every single village in the country.
That is all. On key political issues such as military spending, taxation, foreign policy, EU and NATO membership, or migration, the Students’ List takes no stance, even though there are fierce conflicts over these matters and Serbia lies at the centre of conflicting imperialist interests. The Kosovo conflict, too, remains unresolved. The future fault lines of the Students’ List are already emerging over these issues, since their only common ground was their rejection of Vučić.
For the first time, the Socialist Equality Group is standing a candidate in the New Zealand election—Tom Petterson in the Hutt South electorate—to advance a socialist and internationalist perspective, to fight against the program of war and austerity that every established party is putting forward.
We urge workers, young people and readers of the World Socialist Web Site to attend our public election meeting this Sunday:
WHEN: Sunday, November 1, at 1:30 p.m.
WHERE: Dowse Art Museum, 45 Laings Road, Lower Hutt.Register here to attend in person or here to participate online via Zoom.
The meeting will discuss the urgent issues confronting the working class that are being buried by every other party: the expanding world war and the eruption of class struggles internationally.
8. Lula’s reelection in Brazil: A vote against fascism sets stage for an eruption of class struggle
Lula’s reelection opens a period of intensified class struggle, in which the aspirations of the workers and young people who voted for him will collide head-on with his government’s capitalist program.
Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of the Workers Party (PT) won an unprecedented fourth term as president of Brazil on Sunday, October 25. With 51.79 percent of the valid votes, against 48.21 percent for Senator Flávio Bolsonaro of the Liberal Party (PL), Lula reversed the result of the first round, in which Flávio had won 47 percent to 45.2 percent. Abstention, which in the first round had been the highest since 1998, fell to the lowest in two decades, and blank and spoiled ballots reached a historic low.
Lula’s reelection was driven by a broad-based hostility to a return to power by the Bolsonaros, whose campaign exuded the unmistakable stench of fascism. The weeks leading up to the runoff were marked by massive demonstrations in the country’s main cities, motivated by a repudiation of the prospect of a government headed by the son and direct representative of Jair Bolsonaro—imprisoned for conspiring to carry out a fascist coup in 2022–2023—and subordinated to Washington’s imperialist agenda.
This setback for the far right triggered declarations from political organizations supporting Lula that the country had been pulled back from the abyss. Vice President Geraldo Alckmin, former governor of São Paulo for the right-wing Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), provided the formula, declaring that Lula had “for the second time, saved Brazilian democracy.”
This political complacency is fed by the pseudo-left, which celebrates the victory as heralding a new flowering of reformism in Brazil and the world. Jacobin magazine, the organ of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), hailed it as “a beam of hope in a dark world.” These readings are as unrealistic as they are disorienting for the working class and youth in Brazil and internationally, who find themselves in direct confrontation with a world capitalist system in its death agony.
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Until a few weeks ago, bourgeois analysts and Trump’s supporters were celebrating the rise of a “blue wave” in Latin America—a supposed rightward shift of the population, expressed in the rise of fascistic governments integrated into Washington’s “Shield of the Americas.” This fraudulent thesis is being refuted by an eruption of social rebellion against these governments and their programs of capitalist austerity. Virtually all of them have roughly the same abysmal approval ratings as their patron in Washington, Donald Trump. The defeat of Flávio Bolsonaro is yet another demonstration of the bankruptcy of the far-right network promoted directly by US imperialism in the region.
But this does not mean that the victory of the PT and its Frente Ampla “halted the region’s right-wing wave,” as CNN emblematically put it.
The crisis of the PT and of the bourgeois nationalist governments of the Latin American Pink Tide as a whole is an irreversible historical process. Flávio’s lead in the first round, the margin of less than four points in the second, and the advance of Bolsonaro’s PL, which became the largest bloc in Congress and won governorships, including those of Rio de Janeiro, Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, represent an irreparable defeat for the perspectives of the PT and of the pseudo-lefts that support it.
The dead end confronting the PT is an expression of the crisis of the entire Brazilian bourgeois regime that has given rise to the threat of fascism and dictatorship. Over three terms of Lula (2003–2010 and 2023–2026) and one and a half of Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016), the PT faithfully administered the interests of capital. A fourth term will not interrupt this process but deepen it. By continuing to play its role as guarantor of the bourgeois order in crisis—implementing capital’s demands for attacks and seeking an accommodation with the far right—the Frente Ampla government will feed its own crisis and nourish the fascist threat.
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The Bolsonaros, in collusion with Washington, are already moving to continue the coup conspiracy. On Sunday night, Flávio declared that “it is impossible to recognize the result of the elections in the context in which things happened” and announced that he will demand the annulment of the results.
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The White House’s official silence was broken Monday afternoon by Trump’s own endorsement of the Bolsonaros’ coup thesis. He told reporters: “I didn’t take sides, but it looked like another rigged election. Elections have to be indisputable, and it looked very bad to me.”
Eduardo Bolsonaro, Flávio’s brother, released a video in English in which he called the election “clearly fraudulent” and appealed to foreign governments: “Don’t recognize these elections.” Eduardo lives in the United States, from where he has been coordinating the activities of Brazilian fascists in direct collaboration with the Trump administration. On the eve of the vote, he had already sown the fraud narrative and argued that, if defeated, his brother should leave the country, as Jair Bolsonaro did in the days before the January 8, 2023 attack.
The solution to an electoral defeat, Eduardo said in the same podcast interview, would be to “send in the Marines”—that is, a US military intervention. The formula directly evokes the US military operation that kidnapped Maduro in Caracas in January.
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The millions who voted for Lula to stop fascism expect from the new government a social and political agenda that is directly at odds with the real interests that will determine the policies of his fourth term. Finance capital presented its demands as soon as the markets opened on Monday. In response to the election results, the dollar jumped 8.65 percent to 5.42 reais, and the São Paulo Stock Exchange futures index plunged 15 percent, triggering the circuit breaker that automatically halts trading. With future interest rates soaring, the National Treasury canceled the auctions of fixed-rate and inflation-linked bonds scheduled for the week.
The markets had openly bet on Flávio and on his tesouraço (sweeping spending cuts) inspired by Milei’s “chainsaw.” After the first round, the Ibovespa rose 7.7 percent in a single session. Monday’s reaction is a political ultimatum to the Lula government, that it must prove that it is capable of imposing upon the working class the same program of cuts the bourgeoisie expected from Flávio.
Analysts at the British bank Barclays listed the signals they are waiting for, including the choice of finance minister, the 2027 fiscal target and the cost of the campaign promises—the increase in the Bolsa Família cash-transfer program, the 5,000-real Pix payment for micro-entrepreneurs, free bus fares on weekends and the exemption from the federal tax on gasoline—which, according to Estadão, will require cuts of at least 39.8 billion reais in the 2027 budget.
Lula’s campaign had already made its orientation clear by presenting Alckmin as the man who understands fiscal adjustment and by including in its government program an expression absent in 2022, “fiscal responsibility.” The first moves toward forming the new cabinet confirm this. According to Correio Braziliense, Alckmin is the leading candidate for finance minister, in order to “win back the sympathy of Faria Lima”—São Paulo’s Wall Street—“which threw itself headlong into Flávio Bolsonaro’s campaign.”
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In his victory speech on Sunday night, Lula rejected the idea that he would have difficulty governing with a “more conservative” Congress: “I didn’t choose Congress, the people chose it, and it is with Congress that I will work and pass things.” More than recognizing the formal legitimacy of the elected legislators, the statement fraudulently presents the reactionary character of Congress as a genuine expression of popular aspirations and signals that the government will subordinate itself to its right-wing agenda.
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Against these illusions, it must be stated clearly what lies ahead: an explosion of the class struggle. In Brazil, the workers and young people who voted for Lula hoping to improve their living conditions will collide with the austerity demanded by the markets and implemented by the Frente Ampla. Throughout Latin America, these struggles will confront both the fascistic far-right regimes of the Milei type and “pink” bourgeois governments such as Lula’s, as part of the global rebellion against war and austerity that stretches from France, Greece and Italy to Chile and Mexico.
The decisive task is to forge the political independence of the working class from all factions of the bourgeoisie, unite its struggles internationally and arm them with a socialist program. This is the perspective fought for by the Socialist Equality Group in Brazil, together with the International Committee of the Fourth International.
9. Salvadoran man dies in Georgia concentration camp amid ongoing hunger strike
In a statement issued on October 24, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) confirmed that a 48-year-old man from El Salvador, Luis Sandoval, died inside the Folkston D. Ray James ICE processing center, a 3,000-bed complex in Georgia on October 23.
According to the agency, Sandoval was kidnapped by agents on October 2 and arrived at the former jail-turned-concentration camp on October 8, 2026. Fifteen days later, ICE officials claim they found him with a ligature around his neck. They wrote in a statement that staff found Sandoval at around 1:46 a.m. and that he was pronounced dead by Charlton County Emergency Medical Services roughly 42 minutes later, at 2:28 a.m.
For the last 20 days, several detainees at the facility run by The GEO Group, which operated as a prison for decades, have been on a hunger strike to protest their conditions and continued imprisonment. It is unclear as of this writing if Sandoval was participating in the hunger strike.
In a courageous video issued earlier this month, the hunger strikers, who include fathers and husbands of US citizens, asylum seekers and immigrants who have committed no crimes, detailed conditions at the for-profit facility and efforts by the Trump administration to subvert their democratic rights. Mujtaba Qeyami, an asylum seeker imprisoned at the facility for 20 months, said most of the people in the former jail came to the United States “seeking protection from political persecution and violence in their home countries,” only to find themselves incarcerated in the United States.
Idris Makhmudov, one of the leaders of the hunger strike, said he had been imprisoned at the facility for over 27 months. After launching the hunger strike, Makhmudov was promptly deported to Russia. In an interview with NPR before he was deported, Makhmudov said that “prisons can be better because you know when you’ll be out. In here, what kills you more every day, that you don’t know when all this [is] going to be changed.”
In a statement released on October 26, Asian Americans Advancing Justice claimed 500 people were participating in the hunger strike at the start of the month, and at least 12 people were still protesting their conditions by refusing food. The statement noted that those participating in the strike “have faced solitary confinement and are now being threatened with force feeding, both widely considered torture.”
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Sandoval is at least the 60th person to have died while in ICE custody since Donald Trump returned to the White House and at least the 300th person to have died in custody since the agency was created in 2003.
From October 1, 2003 through September 18, 2026 UCLA Law’s Behind Bars Data Project recorded 297 deaths in ICE custody. This figure they note “is likely the floor,” as ICE “sometimes” releases people from custody with critical illnesses so that their deaths “are not reflected in our data.”
Three additional deaths have been made public September 18, including most recently Sandoval, Julián Curo Churata, 47, on September 29 and Emiliano Andrade-Covarrubias, 56, on October 17.
10. Australia: NTEU promotes Labor at University of Sydney strike amid assault on higher education
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) invited a member of the New South Wales (NSW) Labor government to address striking University of Sydney (USyd) workers last Thursday, providing a platform for the party that is spearheading the attack on public higher education.
Sarah Kaine, who sits in the NSW Legislative Council, delivered the final speech at a rally of around 400 university staff, students and supporters. Her appearance underscored the NTEU bureaucracy’s alignment with Labor, not only at USyd but nationally, as the federal Albanese government oversees the destruction of thousands of university jobs and the corporate restructuring of higher education.
The stoppage reflected growing anger among university workers over declining real wages, mounting workloads, job insecurity and the destruction of public education.
It was the second one-day strike organised by the NTEU at this university in the latest enterprise bargaining dispute. The action was limited, with small morning pickets dismantled before the lunchtime rally and no further stoppages announced.
The NTEU is nominally demanding a 20 percent wage increase over three years, compared with management’s offer of 11.52 percent. This claim, capped at 20 percent by the NTEU national executive, falls far short of compensating workers for years of real wage cuts.
The NTEU’s claims on workloads, job security and artificial intelligence are window-dressing, committing the union to nothing. On AI, the union seeks consultation and joint review procedures, giving officials a role in overseeing its introduction alongside management, rather than opposing its use to eliminate jobs and intensify workloads.
The NTEU confines workers to separate enterprise bargaining campaigns at individual universities. Nearly 4,000 university jobs have been eliminated nationally over the past two years, while courses have been axed, especially in humanities, and workloads intensified. The union has responded with isolated stoppages and protracted negotiations, opposing a unified struggle against the Albanese government’s sector-wide offensive.
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A mathematics teacher interviewed by the World Socialist Web Site at a picket line said: “I think that we are here today to fight for a better vision in education. There is the problem of a pay rise, for sure, but the central question is what we see in the future of education.”
She criticised the subordination of universities to profit-making, the erosion of academic independence and the threat posed by AI. Having recently arrived from Europe, she expressed surprise at Australia’s restrictive industrial relations laws and the obstacles to coordinated action across universities.
Asked whether she would support united action by academic and professional staff across the sector, she replied: “I would definitely support that… I don’t have a solution of how to do it, though.”
Such a struggle requires a complete break with the NTEU apparatus, which functions as an industrial police force for university managements and Labor governments.
Academic and professional staff, casual workers and students must establish democratically controlled rank-and-file committees, independent of the trade unions, Labor and the Greens, to organise a unified struggle across universities.
These committees must unite with school teachers, health workers and other sections of the working class against austerity, for decent wages, secure jobs and free, high-quality public education as a fundamental social right.
The Committee for Public Education (CFPE), the educators’ rank-and-file network initiated by the Socialist Equality Party, is fighting to build such committees and unite educators with workers in Australia and internationally against austerity, attacks on democratic rights and the diversion of billions into militarism and war.
University workers and students are urged to contact the CFPE to discuss this perspective and the formation of rank-and-file committees.
Contact the CFPE:
Email: cfpe.aus@gmail.com
Facebook: facebook.com/commforpubliceducation
Twitter: CFPE_Australia
11. Australia: Victorian school funding fraud underscores union sellout of teachers
Barely a month before the November 28 election in the Australian state of Victoria, Labor Party Premier Ben Carroll revealed last week that the state’s public schools will not reach supposed full funding until 2034 under a deal with the federal Labor government.
This announcement further exposes the fraud at the heart of the Australian Education Union’s (AEU) sellout of teachers and education support staff last month. “Full funding” was one of the central promises used by the AEU bureaucrats to push through an enterprise agreement with the Labor government that educators had twice rejected—the first such rejections of AEU-Labor sellouts in more than four decades.
12. New Zealand fire agency proposes real pay cut for striking firefighters
Firefighters and support staff across New Zealand participated in their 71st hour-long strike since October 2025 last Friday, amid the campaign for the country’s national election on November 7.
Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) announced earlier this month it is offering firefighters a 2.2 percent pay increase, well below the rate of inflation and amounting to a real pay cut. FENZ’s offer does not include backpay, and firefighters have been working on an expired contract for over two years, last receiving a pay rise in 2023.
FENZ has previously offered a 6.2 percent pay rise over three years. The annual inflation rate is currently 3.7 percent and expected to rise.
The offer is presented to workers who belong to the New Zealand Professional Firefighters Union (NZPFU). A slightly higher, backdated offer of 2.4 percent has been made to non-union staff, including managers—a deliberate attempt to punish union membership and industrial action and to pit workers against each other.
The latest offer does not address firefighters’ demands for better staffing, less reliance on volunteers, and upgrades to the fire truck fleet. At least a quarter of New Zealand’s fire trucks are over 25 years old.
Socialist Equality Group (SEG) members spoke to some of those on strike at Avalon Fire Station in Lower Hutt about their working conditions and demands. The SEG’s Tom Petterson is standing as a candidate in the Hutt South electorate for the November 7 election.
A firefighter with 39 years’ experience said that the number of firefighters in the country had not kept up with the growth of the population. He added that fire trucks were not being regularly replaced. The main truck at Avalon was 23 years old with no talk about whether it will be replaced.
Another firefighter, who has been in the job for 10 years, said: “Our fire trucks are breaking down, we’ve only just started getting so-called ‘new’ fire trucks, but they’ve been in the country more than seven years now. Before that we haven’t had a new fire truck since 2018.”
Regarding the latest pay offer, he said, “We’ve been working on an expired contract for over two years now, and we’ve been doing these one-hour strikes for just over a year. After all that, they’ve come up with an offer that is just insulting. At the same time, the FENZ board is getting a 79 percent pay increase.”
13. Sri Lankan president announces plans to close 34 state institutions
Addressing the annual general meeting of the Government Surveyors’ Association in Battaramulla last Friday, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake announced that his government would close 34 state institutions to cut public expenditure. He said a special committee had been appointed to oversee the closures and mergers, which he claimed were necessary to improve efficiency and eliminate “unnecessary expenditure.”
This announcement indicates the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government is going to further intensify the ruthless austerity measures dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Dissanayake, who is also finance minister, said the ministry had drawn up plans for the closures but did not name the 34 institutions on the chopping block. Nor did he indicate how many public employees would be affected. All he said was that it was necessary to cut public expenditure and ensure the “efficient running” of state institutions.
14. Calgary Opera fires principal singer for displaying Palestinian flag at opening night of Tosca
In an outrageous act of political censorship, the Calgary Opera fired bass singer Gabriel Sanchez-Ortega and replaced him in the role of Cesare Angelotti in its just concluded production of Puccini’s Tosca, for briefly holding up a Palestinian flag at the curtain call on opening night, October 16.
Sanchez-Ortega, an emerging artist in his first year of the McPhee Artist Development Program, was replaced in the role of Angelotti, the escaped political prisoner in Giacomo Puccini’s popular opera. Although Angelotti appears primarily in the first act, his frantic arrival at the Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle serves as the crucial catalyst for the entire plot, sparking the ruthless manhunt led by the villainous Baron Scarpia.
The Calgary Opera’s run of Tosca had only three scheduled performances. The organization said Mr. Sanchez-Ortega was replaced for the second performance on Sunday, October 18 and the final one on Saturday, October 24. During Saturday’s closing performance, protesters carrying Palestinian flags entered the auditorium during the opera, chanting “Free Palestine.” Sanchez-Ortega leant his support to the protest action, displaying a poster on his Instagram profile declaring, “Bring your flags. Bring your voices. Art is meant to confront power, not submit to it.”
Sanchez-Ortega’s summary dismissal has been met with loud public condemnation, in sharp contrast to the stony silence of the political establishment, which, in one form or another, continues to support Israel’s imperialist-backed genocide in Gaza.
The display of the Palestinian flag is significant in and of itself, but in this production it carries added political and symbolic weight. Commentators have pointed out the bitter irony of firing a performer for political expression at a production of Tosca—a political drama in which Cesare Angelotti, an escaped political prisoner, is fighting the oppression of an authoritarian government. One patron who witnessed the protest Saturday night told CTV News, “It was the right one [Tosca] to pick. I don’t think it was lost on anybody.”
15. CIA-backed opposition leader María Corina Machado sent back to Venezuela to contain social protests
María Corina Machado, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime US-funded leader of Venezuela’s right, surfaced without warning on Sunday morning at mass in a chapel in Santa Rosa, outside Barquisimeto, in the western state of Lara, where the right-wing opposition has drawn some of its strongest support. She then led a caravan 400 kilometers through Yaracuy, Carabobo and Aragua, past thousands of supporters and onlookers. She reached Caracas after 9 p.m.
Machado had left the country in December, smuggled out by a US team. According to Reuters, she flew from Panama to Colombia and crossed overland in an operation coordinated with the US, Panamanian and Colombian governments, approved by Donald Trump and guarded by US security contractors.
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US officials had asked her to postpone her return, Reuters reports. Waving her in now shows they judge the situation unstable enough that diverting popular anger needed all hands on deck.
The Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict documented 1,101 protests in September, 37 a day and nearly six times the 187 of September 2025. Of these, 531 were over electricity.
The second cause was wages. The minimum wage has been frozen since March 2022 at 130 bolívares, now worth less than 30 US cents. Public workers get $240 in bonuses that do not count toward pensions, while food for a family of five cost $761.35 in September.
On October 13, health and education workers marched in central Caracas until police blocked them from reaching the Miraflores palace.
On October 20, active and retired oil workers in Zulia walked out against wages of $5 a week, warning of a national oil strike. A Committee of Blackout Victims and Communes, a current of dissident Chavista groups, has called a national protest for Tuesday. “They take the oil, they leave us the darkness,” the committee declared.
On October 24, Rodríguez boasted of record output at Petrozamora and 17 energy agreements with the US, the day after a State Department economic adviser toured the Bachaquero field with Alejandro Betancourt, head of the Pentagon-backed oil venture NABEP.
Caracas must still seek US permission to spend its oil revenues, the Financial Times reported in September. “Do you know how much money we’re taking out of Venezuela? Hundreds of millions of dollars,” Trump told a Kentucky rally on October 17. On October 14, the Treasury lifted sanctions on Rodríguez’s brother Jorge.
Machado’s spokeswoman signaled her role, saying on Monday she is ready to sit down “not only with Delcy, but with whoever must sit down,” since “there is no credible process of transition or election without the strength and legitimacy of the people she represents.” The offer is to deliver that “strength” to the negotiations.
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This month the government eased tax requirements on small businesses, cut the registry of high-income “special taxpayers” from 132,000 to 44,000 and promised a tax reform to “harmonize the tax burden” for private production. With the employers’ federations FEDECAMARAS and FEDEINDUSTRIA and the government-aligned union central CBST, it is preparing a “Labor Emergency Law” to cut labor costs, aimed above all at the 2012 provision that calculates severance on a worker’s last salary. Machado, who has long advocated privatizing the state oil company PDVSA and radical deregulation, speaks for the same business interests.
The plunder Washington intends requires a working class kept poor and politically disarmed. Machado’s return will not resolve the crisis of bourgeois rule in the protectorate but only deepen it.
16. Journalists in Türkiye take to the streets against censorship and arrests
On Saturday, hundreds of journalists and thousands of others took to the streets in at least 10 cities across Türkiye, including Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Diyarbakır and Adana, to protest the escalating attacks on the press by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) reporters and supporters joined the marches in Istanbul and İzmir.
The protests were called by press organizations including the Journalists’ Union of Türkiye (TGS), the Turkish Journalists’ Association (TGC), the Press Council, the Contemporary Journalists’ Association (ÇGD), the Press, Printing and Publishing Workers’ Union and the Dicle Fırat Journalists’ Association. They came on the eve of the first anniversary of the appointment of a trustee to the TELE1 channel and shortly after the government seized Halk TV through a trustee on October 14. The demonstrators marched under the slogan “Enough is enough, we can’t breathe! No to censorship, the news must be free.”
In Istanbul, protesters gathered in Kadıköy and marched to the district’s Pier Square. Workers from TELE1 and Halk TV joined the march, during which the names of jailed journalists were read out one by one. Protesters chanted slogans such as “A free press cannot be silenced” and “Journalists in prison, fund swindlers free.”
In Ankara, journalists marched from Kolej Square to Sakarya Street, chanting “İsmail will get out and write again,” a reference to BirGün reporter İsmail Arı, jailed on October 21 on the baseless charge of “publicly disseminating misleading information.” A message from Arı was read out at the rally. He noted that he had been arrested for the second time in a single year, at the same courthouse and on the same charge. “Let us do our job,” he said.
In İzmir, journalists gathered in front of the Türkan Saylan Cultural Center. After a statement was read, they marched to the statue of Zübeyde Hanım and laid down their pens in protest. WSWS supporters at the protest held placards reading “Freedom for journalists and the press” and “Freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk, sentenced to 15 years in Ukraine for his anti-war writings.”
The protests come as the attack on the press reaches a new stage. In roughly 20 months, trustees have been appointed to 10 television channels, including Flash Haber TV, Ekotürk, Habertürk, TELE1 and, most recently, Halk TV. Access to the websites of T24, Mezopotamya Agency and JINNEWS has been blocked. According to the Freedom of Expression Association (İFÖD), at least 1,270 X accounts were blocked in September alone. They include the accounts of Evrensel, soL Haber, Kısa Dalga, bianet, T24 and Halk TV.
X, owned by billionaire Elon Musk, complied, making the accounts invisible in Türkiye. Even the accounts of İFÖD itself and of its EngelliWeb project, which documents internet censorship, were blocked.
Arrests of journalists are also mounting rapidly. According to the Independent Communication Network (BİA), seven journalists were arrested between July and September. In the first three weeks of October alone, at least seven more were jailed. According to the list kept by the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA), 29 journalists and media workers are currently behind bars, while journalist İsmail Saymaz is under house arrest. The main instrument of these arrests is Article 217/A of the Turkish Penal Code. Known as the “censorship law,” it came into force in October 2022 and criminalizes “publicly disseminating misleading information.”
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The global turn to authoritarian forms of rule, which finds its most concentrated expression in Trump’s drive to establish a dictatorship in the United States, is the product of the deepening crisis of the world capitalist system. As the WSWS has explained, the escalation of imperialist war and the mass protests spreading across Europe and internationally are two sides of the same crisis.
Everywhere, the ruling classes are responding to growing opposition to war, militarism and austerity with police-state measures. In Ukraine, a NATO proxy and close partner of Türkiye, a court sentenced 27-year-old socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk to 15 years in prison on August 10 for “high treason under martial law.” He had opposed the US-NATO proxy war against Russia from the standpoint of the international working class.
The WSWS demands the immediate and unconditional release of the jailed journalists, of Bogdan Syrotiuk and of all political prisoners. The trustees appointed to media outlets must be removed and the internet access bans lifted at once. In this struggle for fundamental democratic rights, journalists and all defenders of press freedom must turn to the working class in Türkiye and internationally, which is paying the price of war and austerity.
17. Communist Party Marxist–Kenya leader Booker Omole acquitted after eight-month prosecution
Booker Ngesa Omole, General Secretary of the Stalinist (CPM-K), has been acquitted of all criminal charges following an eight-month prosecution initiated after his violent arrest and torture by Kenyan police in February.
According to a statement issued by the CPM-K last week, the court acquitted Omole on every count after the prosecution’s case was seriously undermined by the withdrawal of the original complaint and statements by a key prosecution witness, Andrew Amoth. Amoth submitted a sworn affidavit on March 9 withdrawing his earlier allegations. The party states that the court also ordered the immediate return of property seized by police, including KSh 319,000 ($2,460).
Omole was seized in Isiolo in late February by plainclothes police officers who initially failed to identify themselves or produce an arrest warrant. He was severely beaten and tortured, sustaining injuries to his arm, tooth and fingers. He was subsequently taken to Mlolongo Police Station, where he was denied access to lawyers, relatives and party representatives, before being transferred to Kitengela Remand Prison.
Police advanced a series of extraordinary accusations, including assaulting and attempting to kill police officers, unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition, and purported connections to international drug trafficking involving Venezuela.
Omole maintained that he was a licensed firearm owner, had been unarmed when arrested and that his firearm was voluntarily surrendered during a subsequent police search of his apartment, with the licence provided. The allegations of connections to Venezuelan drug trafficking followed CPM-K demonstrations opposing the US military intervention in Venezuela and demanding the release of President Nicolás Maduro.
Omole was eventually released on bail in early March, but the court imposed a KSh 500,000 ($3,850) bond, part of consolidated bond requirements of KSh 1.4 million ($10,800) for him and his co-accused. He remained under the threat of prosecution until the October acquittal.
From the outset, the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) opposed Omole’s arrest, mistreatment and prosecution. On February 25, the ICFI issued a statement demanding his immediate release, denouncing the police operation and warning that the attack on Omole formed part of a wider assault on democratic rights in Kenya.
The following day, the WSWS published a detailed examination of the charges, exposing the contradictions in the accusations, reporting Omole’s claims of torture and the denial of medical treatment, and challenging the attempts to associate his political activities with drug trafficking and criminality.
The ICFI reiterated its demand for his immediate and unconditional release, the dropping of all politically motivated charges, and guaranteed access to legal representation and medical care.
Following Omole’s release on bail, the WSWS reported on March 6 that the criminal charges remained in force and condemned the punitive financial conditions imposed on him and his co-accused. The WSWS drew attention to the continued arrests and harassment of CPM-K members, including three activists detained while submitting a petition against extrajudicial killings.
The ICFI has fundamental and irreconcilable political differences with the Stalinist CPM-K. We took a stand as a principled defence of democratic rights, including the right to organise, speak and conduct political activity without intimidation, arbitrary detention or police violence.
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The criminal proceedings against Omole have ended without a conviction. But it does not resolve the serious allegations surrounding his arrest, torture, detention and treatment by the police. Those responsible for any unlawful conduct must be investigated and held accountable. Moreover, democratic rights cannot ultimately be entrusted to the courts, the bourgeois opposition or the trade union bureaucracy.
The courts have not convicted a single policeman over the deaths of over 250 protestors and scores abducted or disappeared. The intelligence units implicated in abductions and enforced disappearances have escaped any accountability. Court orders have not prevented further repression. On June 25, 2026, Ruto’s government sealed off central Nairobi, blocking roads, surrounding Parliament with barricades and arresting at least 355 people nationwide. Police continued deploying masked and unidentified officers despite court orders requiring officers policing demonstrations to be identifiable.
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Ruto’s repression has continued unabated. Yesterday, just ten days after Omole’s acquittal, police arrested several activists in central Nairobi demonstrating against soaring fuel prices and the cost of living. The same day, reports indicated that Tanzanian opposition activist Twaha Mwaipaya was abducted in Machakos County. Mwaipaya had reportedly been seized by unidentified men the previous day, amid a continuing pattern of cross-border abductions of political opponents on Kenyan soil. His abductors have not been identified.
The defence of democratic rights demands the independent political mobilisation of the working class, uniting workers and youth across ethnic and national divisions in a common struggle against the capitalist system that gives rise to repression.
18. Socialist Workers Party meeting in Glasgow attacked by fascists
Masked far-right thugs violently assaulted a public meeting held by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Glasgow last Thursday night. Police Scotland have refused to confirm whether they have charged anyone over the assault.
Around 20 men dressed in black and wearing balaclavas descended on the meeting advertised by the SWP’s Glasgow branch on Mungo Avenue, in the city centre. Social media footage shows the fascists breaching the venue’s external doors and violently kicking two internal glass doors manned by stewards.
The far-right thugs can be heard violently shouting to “open the f* doors”, which they kicked repeatedly, before retreating. Among those present at the meeting were striking Scottish university workers and a speaker from Paris, invited to report on the mass protests in France.
The Glasgow branch of the SWP issued a statement the following day, “The twenty fascists charged against the venue where the event was taking place with the intention to storm and disrupt the meeting and attack participants, but they were repelled at the door. After failing to gain access, they retreated.”
The Socialist Equality Party denounces this attack on the SWP’s meeting and demands that Police Scotland seek out, arrest and charge those involved. The violent assault by fascists underscores the need for heightened vigilance and attention to security for all left-wing, anti-war, anti-fascist and working-class organisations.
19. Defense Secretary Wes Streeting: Britain must be ready for war in “a little over 1,000 days”
Labour’s Defence Secretary Wes Streeting has declared that Britain must be ready to fight a war in 1,000 days. Writing in Sunday’s Telegraph, Streeting warned that by 2030 Britain’s adversaries’ “force strength and war economy could put them in a position to attack.” Therefore, “My defining priority... is to make sure that this country is ready to fight and win a war. That is the only metric that counts.”
Streeting continued, “To prevent the worst, we have to prepare for it. In the first instance, that means expanding our capabilities so our adversaries think twice about attacking us. Should that fail, we must ensure that Britain is ready for war.”
The op-ed concluded, “That gives us a little over 1,000 days to complete our mission: to be ready with our allies to fight and win. This Government will make sure it is mission accomplished.”
The only adversary named by Streeting was Russia. He stated that the main threats to Britain were not simply the danger of “conventional warfare, or Russian tanks rolling across our borders”, but “the growing threat of state sponsored terrorism, sabotage and hostile acts designed to disrupt our lives, undermine our security and spread fear in our communities.”
Hardly a day goes by when Moscow is not accused of engaging in “hybrid warfare” against the UK via the means Streeting described.
Three days before Streeting’s intervention, the Cabinet Office published new “Be Ready” advice—kicking off a three-year campaign which urges every household to stockpile at least three days of food, nine litres of bottled water and other items needed to survive without access to supermarkets or electronic payments. The government said that being “emergency ready” was necessary to plan for “severe weather to cyber attacks, emergencies” that “can disrupt the services you rely on.”
20. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Canada:
British Columbia copper miners strike
Nova Scotia public school education support workers set to strike
Colombia:
Costa Rica:
Peru:
United States:
University of Rochester and Strong Memorial Hospital workers vote for informational picketing as contract talks stall
Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania teachers vote overwhelmingly to strike
Venezuela:
Translated captions available from YouTube
On October 21, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at Berlin’s Humboldt University held its start-of-semester meeting. At the center of the meeting was the case of Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk. On August 10, a Ukrainian court sentenced him to 15 years in prison for “high treason under martial law.” Katja Rippert and Peter Schwarz of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) presented the book The Ukraine War and the Fight for Socialism: The Case of Bogdan Syrotiuk and explained why the persecution of the young Trotskyist is of great significance for every opponent of war.
22. 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.
