Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. Following Trump-Putin deal: EU intensifies war offensive against Russia

In the midst of the most dangerous escalation of the Ukraine war since its outbreak, the European powers on Monday adopted the most extensive expansion of sanctions against the Russian arms industry to date. While US President Donald Trump has struck a diesel deal with Vladimir Putin and is openly demanding the departure of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the European governments are intensifying their economic and military war offensive against Russia.

The sanctions are part of a strategy to weaken the Putin regime and prepare for a direct war against Russia in order to assert their own imperialist interests in Ukraine and throughout Eastern Europe and Eurasia. At the same time, the conflict with Washington is intensifying, as the Trump administration increasingly pursues different geopolitical and economic objectives.

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The NATO nuclear exercise “Steadfast Noon” also begins today, Tuesday. With 17 countries participating, procedures for nuclear operations will be rehearsed in Italy, including operations involving nuclear-capable fighter aircraft. No live nuclear weapons will be used. NATO describes the exercise as a long-planned routine drill that is not directed against any particular country.

Yet in view of the acute confrontation with Russia, its recent nuclear threats and the expiration in February of the New START treaty, which limited the strategic nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia, the danger of a catastrophic escalation and miscalculation is obvious. Under the banner of “nuclear deterrence,” procedures are being rehearsed that would serve the actual use of nuclear weapons in a real conflict.

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While Washington is once again permitting Russian diesel deliveries and pressing Kyiv to make concessions, the European governments insist on Russia’s economic isolation and the continuation of the war.

Trump’s course, of course, has nothing to do with a love of peace. It follows the interests of a faction of American imperialism. Faced with soaring energy prices, not least as a consequence of the American war against Iran, the White House is seeking an understanding with Moscow shortly before the midterm elections that will safeguard American economic interests. The European powers see their own geopolitical objectives threatened by this development.

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Contrary to official propaganda, the European governments are not concerned with defending Ukrainian sovereignty, let alone democracy. Enormous economic and strategic interests are at stake in Ukraine: raw materials, energy and transport routes, agricultural land, markets and the future balance of power in Eastern Europe.

For Germany, Ukraine is of central importance because of its geographical location and resources. It was already at the center of Germany’s imperialist war and great-power policies in the First and Second World Wars. Today, its economic and military integration into the European sphere of influence is intended to push back Russia and open up new spheres of influence for European corporations.

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At the same time, the war serves the fundamental reorientation of German imperialism. Faced with the crisis of its export model, trade conflicts with the United States and competition with China, Berlin is pursuing massive rearmament. Around €140 billion is earmarked for the Bundeswehr and defense in 2027. Germany intends to become Europe’s leading military power in order to assert its own interests independently of Washington and, in the future, even against it. 

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The aggressiveness of the war policy is inseparably bound up with explosive social and political tensions. While governments spend billions on war, they destroy jobs and cut social benefits. In France, almost half a million workers and young people demonstrated on October 6; more than 6,600 people were arrested over the course of the movement. In Spain, hundreds of thousands protested against soaring rents and evictions. Strikes and protests are spreading to other European countries.

Under these conditions, the propaganda claiming that Russia is already waging war against Europe takes on its full significance. The head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service (BND), Martin Jäger, recently declared that Russia was waging a “shadow war against us.” Wadephul justified the new sanctions by citing allegedly increasing “hybrid attacks on EU member states” and referred to an attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport.

The claim that the confrontation has been forced upon Europe is intended to legitimize its own escalation as self-defense and discredit domestic opposition. Preparations for war go hand in hand with strengthening the intelligence services, expanding the police and surveillance apparatus, and attacking democratic rights.

War is not simply a diversion from the domestic political crisis. Militarism, social cuts and authoritarian forms of rule arise from the same fundamental contradictions of capitalism. But the ruling class exploits the external confrontation to demand national unity, impose sacrifices and suppress growing social opposition.

2. Ebola death reported in Kenya as epidemic reaches 9,000 confirmed cases

A Kenyan man who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo died in Nairobi on Oct. 5, Kenya’s first case of the disease. By Oct. 11, day 149 of the epidemic, the Congo had recorded 9,000 confirmed cases and 4,339 confirmed deaths, a case fatality ratio of 48.2 percent. The confirmed cases are about six times the number confirmed at the same stage of the West African epidemic of 2014–16, and the health ministry’s latest published situation report, for Oct. 9, shows how far the virus has run ahead of the official count.

The Kenyan man had lived in the Congo for seven years and, according to Kenyan Health Cabinet Secretary Aden Duale, fell ill there about a month before he left. He traveled by road from Beni to Kampala, Uganda, on Oct. 2 and flew to Nairobi the next day. Uganda’s health ministry said he had a “normal temperature” when screened at Entebbe, and Kenyan officials are investigating whether medication masked his symptoms when he was screened on arrival. He died at Nairobi Hospital on Oct. 5, and Kenya confirmed the Bundibugyo infection the next day.

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For five months, WHO and UN officials have issued warnings and recited formulas while the imperialist powers withheld the resources that would put beds, vaccines, paid health workers and laboratories where the dying are. The money exists, and so does the productive capacity to meet the need. What is lacking is any willingness on the part of the capitalist governments to subordinate profit and their strategic interests in the Congo’s minerals to the lives of its people. Ending this epidemic and preventing future pandemics requires taking the pharmaceutical industry out of private hands and building a global public health system organized around social need. The only social force capable of carrying this out is the international working class.

3. Federal agents raid Ilhan Omar’s home: A new step in Trump’s drive toward dictatorship

Early Monday morning, agents of Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal investigative arm of ICE, raided the Washington D.C. home of Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, on a search warrant secured by the Justice Department. The immigration police have been sent against a sitting member of Congress three weeks before a national election. This is a lawless act of political persecution, and it must be condemned and opposed by every worker and every defender of democratic rights.

Omar, 44, came to the United States as a child refugee from the civil war in Somalia. She has been targeted by the White House for years because of her criticism of aspects of US foreign policy, particularly the Israeli genocide in Gaza. She has not been charged with any crime.

The raid is not simply an effort to influence the November 3 vote. It is a step in the drive by the Trump administration toward presidential dictatorship, and the election itself is one of its targets. A government that sends federal agents into the home of an opposition legislator, on the strength of smears spread by the president, is preparing to dispense with the constitutional forms that are supposed to hold it to account.

The timing was deliberate. The raid came 22 days before the election, in open disregard of the longstanding Justice Department practice of avoiding overt steps against candidates within 60 days of a vote. According to CBS News, Attorney General Todd Blanche was personally aware of the search. Trump told reporters he “had nothing to do with” it.

In fact, Trump gave the signal. On Thursday, October 8, he posted on Truth Social: “The once Great State of Minnesota is being taken over by Somali Immigrants. There is Violence, Murder, and Mayhem all over the State.” He went on: “Fight back Minnesota, fight back! If you need, the Federal Government will come to your rescue.”

Two days later, at a campaign rally in Clarksville, Tennessee, he turned on Omar: “She comes from Somalia, they don’t have a government, they don’t have police. All they have is crime and squalor.” Referring to unproven allegations of fraud spread on right-wing social media, he added, “These people from Somalia, what they’ve done to Minnesota should never be allowed.” On Monday morning, the agents arrived.

The investigation reportedly concerns immigration paperwork filed by Omar’s late father when she was a child. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has gone further, repeating the right-wing smear that Omar married her brother. “If we can prove it,” he said in an interview last month, “then maybe you shouldn’t have been here in the first place; we’ll deport you.”

Omar has been a naturalized citizen since 2000. The administration is openly threatening to strip a member of Congress of her citizenship and expel her from the country.

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The pretext for the assault on the elections is the lie of mass voting by non-citizens, herded to the polls by the Democrats. Investigations have found only small numbers of non-citizens incorrectly registered to vote, usually through mistakes made when they applied for driver’s licenses, and an infinitesimal number of votes actually cast.

These lies are not used merely to bolster Trump’s claim that he won the 2020 election, which he lost convincingly to Joe Biden. Their real purpose is to whip up an anti-immigrant hysteria among his fascist supporters that would facilitate calling off the elections entirely or holding them under martial law conditions, with armed troops and the immigration Gestapo deployed at polling stations, particularly in neighborhoods with large immigrant and minority populations.

The raid comes as the polls point to a Republican debacle. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released October 5 put Trump’s approval rating at 32 percent, a record low, and the Cook Political Report rates the Democrats as favored to win the House. Trump is not preparing to accept such a result. He is preparing to prevent it.

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The administration has turned the Justice Department and the DHS against its political opponents, singling out black women in particular and appealing to racism and misogyny: Omar, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook. Representative LaMonica McIver, Democrat of New Jersey, faces federal assault charges, carrying a potential sentence of more than a decade, relating to an oversight visit to Delany Hall, an ICE detention center in Newark.

Omar called the raid “an attempt to target political enemies and weaponize federal law enforcement.” She said, “For 10 years, Trump has targeted me with baseless lies and smear campaigns. This is just the latest escalation in his campaign of political intimidation,” adding, “I will not be silenced.”

House Democratic leaders Hakeem Jeffries, Katherine Clark and Pete Aguilar called the raid “deeply disturbing” and promised “full accountability for the rogue abuse of power,” without proposing to actually do anything. Other Democrats issued statements and nothing more.

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In the coming weeks, the Democrats will present the November 3 vote as the answer to Trump. The pseudo-left organizations and the trade union apparatus will do the same, working to channel the anger over the raid behind the Democratic Party as the “lesser evil.” The working class must reject this trap.

Under the two-party system, the Democrats would be the sole beneficiaries of a Republican collapse. But they are a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus. Their conflict with Trump centers not on the defense of democratic rights but on questions of imperialist strategy, above all, the war against Russia in Ukraine.

A Democratic victory on November 3 would not halt the drive toward dictatorship. Trump has made clear that he will not accept a result that goes against him, and the Democrats, who downplay the danger at every turn, are terrified of the growth of opposition from below. The forces behind this drive, including the immense concentration of wealth in a financial oligarchy, the turn to war abroad and the assault on immigrants and workers at home, are rooted in the crisis of American capitalism, which the Democrats defend no less than the Republicans.

The Socialist Equality Party has fundamental political differences with Omar and the other Democratic officeholders, who uphold and defend the capitalist system. But we oppose the persecution of them by the Trump administration, and we demand that all investigations and prosecutions of those on Trump’s “enemies list” be immediately halted. The methods now being used against Omar have already been used against immigrants, and they will be turned against every section of working people.

4. France: How Révolution Permanente blocks an independent mobilization of the working class

The high school protests shaking France, which have mounted alongside mass housing protests calling for a general strike in Spain, have turned into a confrontation with the French capitalist regime. It places the necessity of the direct intervention of the working class at the center of the situation. The many protest signs invoking May 1968, when anger at police repression of student protests erupted into the greatest general strike in French history, reflect the broadly sensed need to mobilize the full power of the working class against a bankrupt social order.

The key obstacle to such a mobilization are petty-bourgeois groups like the French Morenoite Révolution Permanente, that try to cut off the youth revolt from an independent, revolutionary mobilization of the working class. Despite a few combative phrases, its analyses are a tissue of evasions, covering up the revolutionary tasks facing the working class. Passing over the escalating NATO war with Russia and growing protests across Europe in silence, RP promotes illusions that the union bureaucracies will make the state “back down.” In an October 7 statement, it writes:

The involvement of workers must also deepen. Solidarity is fundamental, but it must find expression in collective action in the workplaces and strike mobilizations capable of building a united front against repression and the government’s attacks.

But the working class is not a supporting actor in the youth movement. The youth movement, erupting outside the control of the union confederations, has revealed the utter unpopularity of the government and the bloody violence of the police state. It has defied police repression and a wave of mass arrests of over 6,000 youth, overwhelmingly minors. By itself, however, it cannot impose demands for education and social spending, stop imperialist war and the militarization of society, or end police-state violence.

The revolutionary force that can shut down the economy, occupy factories and workplaces, and take power out of the hands of the warmongering capitalist oligarchy is the working class. As the Parti de l’égalité socialiste (PES) explained in its statement: the youth movement can be a powerful lever to mobilize the working class and prepare a general strike. Youth and workers already in struggle can build independent action committees to go to factories, workplaces and working class neighborhoods, discuss with workers and prepare a broader struggle.

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A politically independent struggle to mobilize the working class against imperialist war and capitalist reaction is the path to avoid a new sell-out of the struggles of workers and youth.

5. Spain: Protesters occupying Madrid’s Plaza del Sol speak out, calling for a general strike

On October 3, millions of people protested in cities across Spain against the eviction of 87-year-old Maricarmen and for the right to housing and the need to organize a general strike. Coming amid public sector strikes in Portugal, protests against conscription in Germany, and mass high school student protests in Belgium and France, it revealed the rapid radicalization of workers and youth across Europe. A social order based on inequality and decades of policies of austerity and imperialist war faces deep, politically explosive opposition.

Protesters occupied the Plaza del Sol in Madrid, as well as public squares in a number of other Spanish cities, including Valencia, Barcelona, Seville and Santiago de Compostela. WSWS reporters went to the Plaza del Sol in Madrid to interview workers, professionals and youth who were occupying the square.

A young unemployed worker told the WSWS that the eviction of Maricarmen, followed by her death several days later in hospital, had provoked outrage against capitalist institutions. “An elderly person who has lived for decades in the same house can end up on the street because a company wants higher profits,” she said, drawing the parallel with the situation facing youth: “They tell us that we have to get training to find a good job. But then the money that we earn is not enough to live or to find decent housing. … We cannot spend out lives working just to pay the rent.”

She stressed her opposition to the entire Spanish political establishment, not only the right but also the Socialist Party (PSOE) and Sumar parties, which claim to be “progressive” but implement anti-worker policies: “The parties that have governed do not offer any solutions. The PSOE, Podemos and Sumar have participated in the government for years, but they have not changed anything. We are continuing as before.”

She added that she supported calls that have circulated widely among protesters for a general strike, and that “we will not get where we want to go just by protesting for one day.” The ability of the working class to withhold the production of goods and services is, she said, “a source of pressure that cannot be replaced by appeals to the goodwill of the governing parties.”

6. Trump’s Justice Department targets TV networks for protesting press ban

Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating five major television networks for temporarily suspending White House pool coverage in protest against the exclusion of CNN, MS NOW and Politico last month. The investigation marks a further escalation in the administration’s campaign to subordinate the press to a presidential dictatorship.

The department confirmed the investigation on Saturday, October 10. ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC and Fox News are being targeted over their collective response to Trump’s press ban last month. NBC News reported that the department issued civil investigative demands on Friday, October 9. These are demands for information in a civil investigation, not criminal charges.

The television pool is a longstanding arrangement under which the five networks rotate responsibility for filming presidential events and distribute the footage to other news organizations. It allows outlets to share the expense of coverage and report from events where space is limited.

The administration is invoking antitrust law to attack this temporary act of solidarity. A DOJ spokesperson told Reuters: “Group boycotts among commercial competitors can violate the Sherman Act.”

The investigation is blatantly unconstitutional. The Supreme Court recognizes constitutional protection for peaceful political boycotts while permitting antitrust enforcement against agreements aimed at securing economic advantage by restricting competition.

The networks suspended their coverage in response to Trump’s attacks on their corporate colleagues, not for monetary benefits. No evidence has been provided that establishes a price-fixing arrangement or an effort to exclude a commercial competitor. The administration is attempting to turn any resistance to its attack on press freedom into grounds for another investigation.

Trump announced the exclusion of CNN, MS NOW and Politico in September after denouncing their coverage as “fake news.”

“And when you look at Politico,” Trump said last month, “the stories they wrote are fake. So there’s a lot of news and there may be others to join them, and maybe they can get better. But our country has to have honest news.”

When CNN was prevented from carrying out its scheduled pool duties, the other participating networks suspended the shared coverage. The stoppage was already underway before the subsequent dispute over access to the state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping.

After US District Judge Timothy Kelly ordered the restoration of press credentials, the White House continued restricting access. At the state dinner, CNN was permitted to send technical personnel but excluded from sending its reporter and producer.

The fascist in the White House regards any coverage that does not repeat his lies as attacks on him personally. This extends to obsequious outlets such as Fox News whenever it departs from the role of a campaign organ.

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The government does not need to prevail in court for the investigations to succeed. The threat of losing licenses can influence coverage throughout a prolonged proceeding, especially when corporate executives subordinate journalism to their other business interests.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr demonstrated this method during the attack on Jimmy Kimmel in September 2025. Carr threatened regulatory action, and ABC suspended the comedian’s program, only restoring it after widespread public opposition.

At CBS, the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s late-night program was announced in July 2025 as Paramount sought approval for its merger with Skydance. His final broadcast aired in May 2026. The cancellation followed Paramount’s agreement to pay $16 million to settle Trump’s lawsuit over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris.

After taking control of Paramount through the Skydance Media merger, David Ellison installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News in October 2025. The later acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, completed this October, extended the Ellison-led company’s reach to CNN. The two transactions form successive stages in the concentration of media power among billionaires cultivating close relations with Trump.

ABC had also agreed to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library to settle his lawsuit over George Stephanopoulos’s characterization of the E. Jean Carroll civil verdict.

The Pentagon has pursued a parallel assault on the press. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth threatened journalists’ credentials over “unauthorized” information gathering and drove established outlets to leave their Pentagon workspaces. A further requirement for official escorts obstructed reporters’ access to military personnel. Litigation over the restrictions has continued.

These attacks are part of an international process. Under former Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, government influence over state media expanded while private outlets were closed or acquired by pro-government businessmen.

In Türkiye, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government has responded to a mounting financial scandal with another wave of censorship. Last month hundreds of X accounts were blocked in Türkiye including journalists, news outlets and a miners’ union organizer.

The oligarchy’s control over communications links these international attacks directly to American political life. The Associated Press reported Monday that Elon Musk had supplied more than $276 million since July to support Republican efforts to retain Congress. Since taking over Twitter/X in 2022, Musk has transformed the platform into a right-wing cesspool where fascistic and racist content is encouraged and boosted by Musk himself.

Oracle, associated with billionaire Trump ally Larry Ellison, is one of three managing investors in TikTok’s new US joint venture. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, along with thousands of users, has accused the platform’s new owners of suppressing posts critical of Israel, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Trump administration.

The censorship campaign extends to cultural performances. Anti-genocide rapper Macklemore was kicked off Ed Sheeran’s tour following his pro-Palestinian statements which enraged billionaire stadium owner and Zionist Robert Kraft.

The immense concentration of wealth is incompatible with the defense of democratic rights. The billionaires’ program of war, austerity and fascism is extremely unpopular. Trump’s approval ratings are the lowest of his presidency while support for socialism exceeded 40 percent in the latest Gallup poll.

The Democratic Party offers no way forward. The Obama administration prosecuted Chelsea Manning for exposing US military crimes and pursued an investigation of WikiLeaks. The Trump administration subsequently brought the indictment against Julian Assange, including Espionage Act charges in 2019. These attacks developed across administrations and prepared the ground for the present offensive against what remains of the free press. 

7. US schools deploy weaponized drones as testing ground for dictatorship

With the new school year underway, at least nine public schools across Florida, Georgia and Colorado have installed or are scheduled to install fleets of remotely piloted drones designed to swarm, pepper spray and physically ram individuals identified as targets. Sold as a response to school shootings, they are in fact a testing ground for police repression.

The devices, branded Campus Guardian Angel, are built by Austin-based Mithril Defense, founded by technology entrepreneur Justin Marston and by Bill King, a retired Navy SEAL and former Naval Special Warfare force master chief. The founders say the idea grew from observing Ukraine’s use of drones against Russian infantry.

Florida, site of the 2018 Parkland massacre, which killed 17 students and staff, and Georgia, where two students and two teachers were killed in the 2024 Apalachee High School shooting, have appropriated a combined $1,671,500 for drone pilot programs: $1,121,500 over two fiscal years in Florida and $550,000 in Georgia. Florida ranks dead last nationally in average teacher pay, while Georgia has an average of 386 students per school counselor, more than 50 percent above the 250-to-one ratio recommended by the American School Counselor Association.

Stored in ceiling-mounted charging stations the size of a pizza box, the drones can be activated by a teacher through a mobile app or panic button, then flown remotely by operators up to 1,000 miles away. They can blast sirens and strobes, deploy pepper gel and ram a target at speeds up to 60 mph.

Campus Guardian Angel is the latest development in “school hardening,” the spread of metal detectors, automatic locks and surveillance cameras. In 1999–2000, after the Columbine shooting, only 19 percent of public schools had security cameras; by 2015–16, 81 percent did. Annual spending on school security was estimated at roughly $3 billion in 2024. 

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The drones are part of a broader militarization of the schools that has already crossed the line into direct violence against students. In Omaha, police deployed the same G.L.O.V.E. electric shock gloves that ICE is purchasing en masse, before public outrage forced their withdrawal from most schools.

Mithril installs equipment connecting its operators to a school’s existing security cameras; the company says those feeds are accessed only during an activated emergency response. A designated “threat tracker” is assigned to “find and follow the threat,” while another operator monitors video feeds for the team and law enforcement. Its marketing materials say it records “everything” during a response and stores school security footage, drone video, chats and voice communications afterward.

The introduction of privately operated weapons and camera access into public schools takes place amid a sweeping expansion of surveillance under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). ICE and CBP draw on license-plate readers, networked cameras, facial recognition and Palantir systems in their efforts to locate and track individuals, including protesters against immigration raids. In Minneapolis, federal immigration agents also shot and killed Renée Good and Alex Pretti during the administration’s immigration crackdown.

States are installing this third-party surveillance in public schools amid accelerating social unrest. Students have joined walkouts against ICE raids and deportations as part of broader opposition to the Trump administration’s attacks on immigrants and democratic rights. During an activated response, Guardian Angel operators can track individuals through school and drone cameras and preserve recordings from the incident. These records could later be sought by immigration authorities to identify or track students.

School surveillance footage that qualifies as an education record can be disclosed under a judicial order or subpoena or in a qualifying health-and-safety emergency; recordings created and held by a school law enforcement unit for law enforcement purposes may fall outside those federal privacy protections altogether. This creates the danger that footage collected in schools for purported safety purposes could later be sought in immigration investigations, even though no such use of Guardian Angel has been documented.

This is not the first time the administration has used public institutions as laboratories for repression. When ICE agents were deployed to airports in March, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon openly described the operation as a “test run” for the midterm elections.

8.  Sri Lanka’s new anti-terror law grants sweeping state powers to suppress social dissent

On October 6, Sri Lanka’s Justice and National Integration Minister Harshana Nanayakkara presented the Protection of the State from Terrorism Bill (PSTA) to parliament, which will replace the 1979 Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA).

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government presents the PSTA as democratic reform of the notoriously draconian PTA. In fact, the new proposed law retains the PTA’s repressive features and grants the executive and military sweeping powers against social and political opposition, which in some respects go further than the existing law.

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Several international organizations—including the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the World Organization Against Torture—have criticized the PSTA. They warn that its vague definition of terrorism, and provisions for prolonged detention, military arrest powers and inadequate judicial safeguards could reproduce PTA-era abuses, enabling arbitrary detention, torture and repression of minorities, journalists, activists and political opponents. 

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In country after country the ruling elites are turning to dictatorial and fascistic methods to defend their rule. Working people, meanwhile, are turning to the left and entering struggles against austerity and imperialist war. What they require is a socialist and internationalist perspective and leadership.

The Revolutionary Communist League and its successor, the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), have consistently fought for the PTA’s abolition, and to unite Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim workers in a common struggle for socialism. 

The SEP demands the repeal of all repressive laws, including the PSTA, and the abolition of the executive presidency. This will not be achieved by appealing to any faction of the bourgeoisie. The fight for democratic rights is inseparable from the struggle to mobilise the working class behind the program of the Trotskyist movement, to abolish capitalism and establish workers’ governments—in Sri Lanka and internationally—to reorganize society along socialist lines.

9. The SEP (Australia) and the fight against war

The first of five resolutions adopted unanimously by the Eighth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia), held September 26–29, 2026, summarized here with the assistance of Socialism AI:

The global crisis

• The Congress meets amid a breakdown of global capitalism marked by militarism, dictatorship, and attacks on workers' rights.
• World war is already underway, not a future threat, and carries the danger of nuclear catastrophe.
• The crisis is sharpest in the United States, where the Trump administration is dismantling the post-World War II order and moving toward fascist dictatorship.
• The US war on Iran, launched February 28, was an illegal war of aggression comparable to the crimes for which Nazi leaders were tried.
• The crisis cannot be explained by Trump's personality; his policies are those of the entire corporate establishment and all imperialist powers.
• The war on Iran is the culmination of 35 years of US militarism since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.
• The US attempt to overcome capitalism's contradictions through military force has failed, leaving it a $40 trillion debtor with a hollowed-out industrial base.
• All imperialist powers, including Germany, Britain, France, Japan and Australia, are rearming to offset their own crises.
• The ICFI warned as early as 1991 that this militarism was leading to a new world war.
• The war against Russia has already begun through the NATO proxy war in Ukraine, which the US deliberately provoked.
• The Middle East wars and the assault on Venezuela are fronts of the same global war, aimed ultimately at China.

The Indo-Pacific and Australian imperialism

• The US has not yet attacked China, but all conditions for a devastating war have been prepared.
• The US has ringed China with aggressive alliances—the Quad and AUKUS—and is remilitarizing Japan and South Korea.
• The US has set fuses for war by overturning the One China policy on Taiwan, inflaming the South China Sea, and stoking border disputes.
• This year marks 15 years since the US "pivot to Asia," announced by Obama in the Australian parliament in 2011.
• The Gillard government, installed by a backroom coup, cemented Australia's role as a staging base for war against China.
• The Labor government's central policy is to complete Australia's transformation into a US military base.
• This is being realized through the largest military build-up since World War II, including nuclear submarines and strike missiles.
• Over $14 billion is being spent on northern bases, with US forces, Pine Gap, and other facilities expanding across the continent.
• Australia is acting as an attack dog against China throughout the region, especially against the Pacific Island states.
• Australia is an imperialist power that has always advanced its own interests under the umbrella of a dominant ally.
• Australia is also a key US partner globally, backing the Iran attack, the Gaza genocide, and the war on Russia.
• War abroad means war on workers at home: the government is militarising education, attacking protest, and imposing austerity, including gutting the NDIS.

The working class and the fight against war

• While the ruling classes turn to war, the international working class is entering into struggle.
• Globalisation has created a working class of at least 3.6 billion, whose unity is the only means of ending war.
• The SEP has a special responsibility to unite the roughly 2 billion workers of the Indo-Pacific.
• The fight is against the entire political establishment, including the Greens and pseudo-left groups like Socialist Alternative, which serve imperialism.
• The SEP rejects the pseudo-left's false designation of Russia and China as imperialist powers, which is war propaganda.
• The SEP also rejects the fraud of "multipolarity," which accepts the nation-state system that causes war.
• The SEP demands an immediate end to the wars on Iran, Gaza, and Russia, and the dismantling of the war machinery against China.
• The SEP demands an end to the US-Australia alliance, US bases, and the national-security apparatus.
• The SEP fights nationalism, xenophobia, and attempts to conscript young people.
• These demands are advanced in opposition to the capitalist state, not as appeals to it.
• The fight against war is inseparable from the fight for the political independence of the working class.
• The Congress resolves to build the SEP and the ICFI as the revolutionary leadership that can turn the fight against war into world socialist revolution.

10. Chile: Strikes shut down world’s largest copper mines

Two of the largest copper operations in the world are now paralyzed by strike action, as the class struggle erupts in the sector that is the lifeblood of the Chilean economy. At the Centinela mine, a large open-pit copper and gold mining complex controlled by the Luksic family’s Antofagasta Minerals, 709 workers from the Esperanza mine and Centinela district unions have been on strike since October 7. At the Escondida mine, the world’s largest copper mine, operated by the Anglo-Australian giant BHP, the 1,020-member Union No. 2 of Supervisors and Staff has announced a strike for Wednesday, October 14, after 94.8 percent of its members rejected the company’s final offer. 

These strikes are a sharp expression of a crisis that is convulsing the entire Chilean mining industry, a crisis of falling production, rising prices, mounting deaths, and a working class that is beginning to move against the corporatist union apparatus that has policed it for four decades.

On Sunday, another serious accident at Codelco’s El Teniente Division claimed the lives of two workers from the contractor Aura Ingeniería S.A. A landslide in the Rajo Sur section of the operation trapped contractor mechanical operators who were conducting an inspection. The two workers, aged 34 and 53, were buried under the landslide debris and were found deceased following search and rescue efforts. This latest tragedy brings the total mining deaths for this year to 11. 

The two disputes reveal how far the conflict has moved beyond the traditional terrain of the “end-of-conflict bonus.” At Centinela, the central demand is not a pay raise but the elimination of what the unions call “systematic discrimination,” the disparities in wages and benefits between workers performing identical duties but belonging to different unions. The company has responded that these differences stem from collective bargaining agreements “negotiated at different times” and are not the product of any decision on its part. It has offered a 2 percent real wage increase, a settlement bonus of approximately US$23,000 per worker, and a soft loan.

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The strikes are unfolding against the backdrop of a profound crisis of the industry itself. Copper traded at $6.66 per pound on October 9, with the annual average reaching $6.11—a 40.4 percent increase over 2025. In August, the metal hit an all-time high of $6.74 per pound. Yet in that same month, Chile produced 369,500 metric tons—13 percent less than a year earlier and its worst monthly figure since February 2011.

This is the central paradox of the Chilean economy: the country is failing to produce copper at the highest price in history. Manuel Viera, president of the Chilean Chamber of Mining, told El Mercurio Online: “I would characterize this as a crisis of management and supply, not a market crisis. No one is buying less from us or paying us less. We’re failing to produce even at the best price in history, and a mining country cannot afford that.”

The figures are stark. From January through August, production totaled 3.25 million metric tons, 8 percent less than the same period last year. Three companies—the state-owned Codelco, Escondida, and Spence—account for 91 percent of the decline. Codelco’s El Teniente fell 27 percent due to restrictions following the July 2025 accident that killed six workers; Chuquicamata fell 22 percent; Ministro Hales fell 21 percent. Escondida lost 73,500 metric tons between January and July due to lower ore grades. Centinela fell 16.8 percent.

Economy and Mining Minister Daniel Mas has projected a 6.6 percent decline in mining production for 2026, to approximately 5 million metric tons. Chilean Chamber of Mining head Maurel Viera’s estimate is even more pessimistic: 4.95 million metric tons, the lowest level since 2003, with a potential loss of $6 billion in exports and roughly one percentage point of GDP growth if the strikes drag on.

The mining crisis is inseparable from the broader deterioration of the Chilean economy. The Monthly Index of Economic Activity (Imacec) fell 1 percent in August, the second consecutive monthly contraction, dragged down by the 17.4 percent collapse in mining output, the worst single-month decline in 15 years. Finance Minister Jorge Quiroz noted that the last time mining suffered a contraction on the scale seen in August was during the 44-day strike at Escondida in 2017.

Unemployment has risen to 9.6 percent, its highest level since 2021, with female unemployment at 10.3 percent. Inflation remains stubbornly high, driven in part by the Kast government’s decision to end the fuel price stabilization mechanism, which has sent diesel prices soaring. 

Six regions entered technical recession in the first half of 2026. The contraction is felt most acutely in the mining regions of Antofagasta (6.3 percent), Tarapaca (4.5 percent) and O’Higgins (4.2 percent). The overall economic decline was offset by a slight growth in the Metropolitan Region (1.6 percent) which accounts for almost half of the nation’s GDP. 

The crisis is being administered by the ultra-right government of José Antonio Kast, whose 2027 budget dismantles public education, healthcare and culture while showering tax breaks on the mining monopolies. Kast’s government is closely tied to the Trump administration, which has embraced it as a model for its “Shield of the Americas” project.

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The human cost of the profit drive is written in blood. Five miners have died in little more than two weeks. In addition to the latest two fatalities in Sunday’s El Teniente landslide, on September 23, Carlos Rodríguez Soto was killed in a maintenance accident at the same mine. On October 1, Waldo Alexis Castillo Barraza, a 49-year-old mechanic employed by the contractor Berliam SpA, was crushed to death while changing a pulley on a conveyor belt at Codelco’s Radomiro Tomic mine. On October 6, Nelson Torres Parra, 46, a drilling operator, was found dead next to a drilling rig at the Los Colorados mine in Vallenar. 

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These deaths come amid record profits for fiscal year 2026. BHP achieved record copper production in fiscal year 2025, with Escondida producing 1.2 million metric tons, its highest output in 17 years. Escondida’s after-tax profits reached US$6.732 billion in fiscal 2026, up from US$4.237 billion the year before. 

By the union’s own calculations, the entire cost of its collective bargaining demands could be paid for with four days of production. Meanwhile, the fortune of Iris Fontbona, matriarch of the Luksic family mining clan, rose by 91 percent in a single year to US$55.6 billion. BHP’s global CEO Mike Henry received US$8.5 million in total compensation.

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The formation of FESIN BHP-Chile, the federation bringing together more than 5,000 workers from Escondida and Spence, has been hailed as a historic step forward. The centrist El Porteño has described it as “the embryo of a political class organization in a strategic sector of the national economy.” The Morenoite La Izquierda Diario has promoted the federation’s statements denouncing the “safety crisis” at BHP. Both tendencies equate the unions with the working class. This is factually false. The trade unions are not organs of the working class; they are middlemen, a layer of functionaries interposed between capital and labor. Their social position is defined by their role in administering the sale of labor power within the framework of the capitalist system. Historically, they have a vested interest in the maintenance of bourgeois law and the capitalist state—not in their overthrow. The union bureaucracy lives off the very order it claims to oppose: its offices, its dues, its legal recognition, its seats at the negotiating table all depend on the continued existence of the system of exploitation.

Globalization has transformed this role into something more naked. In the era of globalized production, the unions have become the industrial policemen of the corporations. They sit in corporatist tripartite roundtables alongside the state and the employers and impose the dictates of business and government upon their own members. They negotiate the subcontracting regimes that have casualized much of the mining workforce. They administer the “end-of-conflict bonus” system that substitutes one-off payments for permanent wage gains. They police the workforce between contracts, suppressing wildcat action and enforcing the discipline of production.

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The corporatist trade unions in Chile have been a crucial pillar of capitalist stability for 40 years. They shut down strikes at the decisive moment, as the 2018 Escondida struggle demonstrated, when the union imposed an 18-month extension on workers who had voted overwhelmingly to strike. The record of the 2024 Escondida strike by the much larger Union No. 1 is equally instructive. As the World Socialist Web Site reported, the union “has repeatedly used such limited strikes as a safety valve to suppress opposition and impose sellout contracts.” It refused to rally the non-unionized contract workers, set up picket lines, or appeal to broader sections of workers and thus isolated the strike and made a defeat an accomplished fact. 

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The strikes at Centinela and Escondida must be seen not as isolated collective bargaining disputes but as part of the growing militancy of the international working class. They follow the strike wave that has swept through auto plants, healthcare systems and logistics networks across North America, Europe and Asia. These strikes and protests are driven by the impossible cost of living and growing conflict with the corrupt trade union apparatus.

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The working class can advance only by building independent organs of struggle. The WSWS has called for the creation of “independent, democratic and militant rank-and-file organizations of workers in factories, schools and workplaces, on an international scale, as new organs of struggle.” These committees must unite direct employees and contract workers—the division between them is the central weapon of the mining companies—and must link the economic demands of the miners to the political fight against the Kast government and the entire capitalist order.

Chilean workers have a history of precisely this type of initiative. During the Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, the Cordones Industriales, industrial belts of workers’ councils, emerged as embryonic organs of workers’ power, coordinating production and struggle across factories and mines. They were betrayed by the Stalinist Communist Party and the Socialist Party, which subordinated the working class to the “progressive national bourgeoisie” and, in the case of the El Teniente strike, deployed troops to crush workers who broke out of the control of the government. The result was the 1973 coup and the Pinochet dictatorship.

The lesson of that defeat is not that workers’ power is impossible, but that it requires a revolutionary leadership. The WSWS wrote in commemorating the 50th anniversary of the coup: “The fundamental lesson of the Chilean defeat was that the working class was willing and able to take political power, but it lacked the decisive element of a revolutionary leadership, a party based upon Trotskyism and the assimilation of the bitter lessons of the 20th century.”

11. Thousands protest in New Zealand on third anniversary of Gaza genocide

Thousands of people joined marches across New Zealand on October 10 as part of global demonstrations against the Gaza genocide. More than 23 protests were organized across the country, with thousands attending in the main centres of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

The event marked three years since Israel launched its genocidal war against the Palestinian people, with the full support of the United States and its allies. The Gaza Strip has been reduced to rubble, with 70 percent of its territory now occupied by the Israeli military. More than 74,300 Palestinians have been confirmed dead and the real toll is likely in the hundreds of thousands, including tens of thousands of children.

Israel has expanded its war into southern Lebanon and is killing and terrorizing Palestinians across the West Bank. It has also joined the US imperialist war of aggression against Iran, which has killed thousands and devastated the global economy.

The ongoing global protests show the widespread and undiminished anger and opposition to the genocide and the expanding Middle East war. The events were completely blacked out by New Zealand’s corporate and state-run media, which has reported as little as possible on the mass protests over the last three years.

The organizers, including Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa and Justice for Palestine, sought to turn the protests into campaign rallies for the Labour Party and the Greens ahead of the November 7 election.

Addressing the crowd in Auckland, the pseudo-left Socialist Aotearoa leader Joe Carolan said: “Change the government and vote them [the National Party and its allies] out—like they did in New York with Mamdani, the first Muslim socialist [mayor] of New York!”

Zohran Mamdani, a leading member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has in fact capitulated to Zionist forces in the city. He backtracked on his election promise to arrest the war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, who was able to deliver a genocidal tirade at the UN General Assembly in New York while police arrested hundreds of protesters outside.

On October 7 Mamdani attended a pro-Zionist rally and was denounced as a “traitor” by hundreds of pro-Palestinian counter-demonstrators. The fake socialist mayor has allocated millions of dollars in public funds to Zionist groups and has repeatedly met with Donald Trump to whitewash the president’s fascist agenda.

Socialist Aotearoa’s promotion of Labour and the Greens as a “humane” alternative to the current government is equally fraudulent. The middle-class group aims to prevent the building of a socialist movement against imperialist war by channeling all opposition into support for pro-imperialist parties.

12. Sixty-four million fewer people received aid last year due to funding cuts by imperialist powers

State of the Humanitarian System 2026, published by ALNAP (Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in humanitarian action), has revealed that 64 million fewer people received aid last year.

Aid agencies were focusing only on those whose lives were in immediate danger as they drastically scaled back their support for longer-term issues and ensuring an ability to recover from crises.

The humanitarian system has suffered one of its biggest contractions since its formation in the post-World War II era as a result of a 30 percent cut in humanitarian aid contributions between 2022 and 2025, from $47.5 billion to $33.3 billion, and the loss of thousands of aid workers’ jobs.

ALNAP warned that the humanitarian aid system is crumbling amid funding cuts, increasing demands and escalating state violence. Its central finding is also its most empirically grounded: state violence is now the dominant engine of global displacement, far exceeding disasters, droughts and earthquakes or violence by non-state armed groups. The overwhelming majority of people forced from their homes today are fleeing government militaries, government policies, and government engineered crises.

Since 1991 the United States, backed by its allies, has been involved in perpetual wars that have displaced entire populations and destroyed entire societies. A conservative estimate of the number of people displaced by these wars, based on data from the Costs of War Project (Brown University), is around 40 million, with a plausible upper limit of 50 to 60 million.

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State of the Humanitarian System 2026 documents the obstruction of humanitarian access through a raft of administrative, territorial, military, legal, political, and informational mechanisms. State violence is now the major source of harm to humanitarian personnel via airstrikes, shelling, arrests, criminalization, intimidation, surveillance, propaganda and proxy violence used as deliberate tools of war and governance to restrict humanitarian aid and control civilian populations.

In 2025, for example, more than 1,180 aid workers globally were victims of major attacks, driven largely by Israel’s genocidal war in the occupied Palestinian territories, where 187 humanitarian workers were killed, 80 injured, 23 detained and two kidnapped. Governments are now major perpetrators of humanitarian norm violations—deliberately so—attacking civilians and aid workers, obstructing access, destroying infrastructure and weaponising deprivation.

The report concludes that the humanitarian system is collapsing because states have turned from guarantors of protection into producers of mass harm. The very governments—the US, Britain, France, Germany and Japan—that once claimed to uphold the global humanitarian system are now actively dismantling it.

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For decades, following the Second World war, imperialist states used humanitarianism to mask the violence of their foreign policy and to outsource responsibility for crises, thereby maintaining cut-price moral legitimacy and stabilizing regions without accepting refugees. In the face of an escalating crisis of world capitalism, this policy is being junked in favour of state violence against the most oppressed.

As the World Socialist Web Site explained in its analysis of the Trump administration’s dismantling of USAID: USAID was founded in 1961 to “provide a democratic and humanitarian cover for the defense of imperialist interests around the world”. Its abandonment signals that a bankrupt US imperialism that can longer afford the humanitarian cover for its predatory actions and that henceforth it will rely on brutal violence to defend its interests.

In contrast defense spending for existing and future wars is increasing. The US has crossed the $1 trillion threshold for the first time, accounting for around 34 percent of global military expenditure. China has increased its budget to roughly $336 billion, an increase of more than 40 percent over five years. Russia is spending $190 billion, a 65 percent rise over five years. European rearmament is unprecedented. The European imperialist powers combined nearly matched the US, with spending rising 14 percent to $864 billion amid a vast rearmament drive. Germany’s military spend has surged to $114 billion, up 75 percent in five years, while Poland has increased spending by 120 percent.

Globally, military expenditure has hit a record $2.9 trillion, rising for ten consecutive years and jumping 9.4 percent in 2024 alone—the steepest increase since the late Cold War.

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The question is not whether governments have enough money to provide humanitarian assistance. They retain the capacity to mobilize very large sums when they identify a strategic interest. Ukraine demonstrates what happens when a crisis is viewed as strategically important for a major donor: humanitarian assistance is accompanied by resources on an entirely different scale for military purposes. The UK had provided £357 million in humanitarian aid to Ukraine from the start of the war to mid‑2026, but that sat alongside an enormous £13.7 billion military commitment in the same period.

The means to feed, house and care for every human being exist in abundance—the world produces enough food to feed everyone, yet nearly 3 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. This is the direct result of production based upon private profit and the conflict between rival imperialist states to control and plunder the world’s resources. The only force capable of resolving the crisis is the international working class, united across the borders that the refugee crisis exposes as barbaric, in a struggle to replace capitalism with socialism.

13. United Kingdom: Kent hospitals ordered to cut 15 percent of staff as Burnham government slashes NHS to fund war

Kent and Medway Integrated Care Board (ICB) in south-east England is demanding unprecedented cuts from Medway NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) over the next five years, threatening hospital services, treatment and patient safety.

Kent and Medway are the canary in the coal mine for the National Health Service’s (NHS) wider financial crisis. Its health system recorded England’s largest deficit in 2025/26: £190.2 million with government support funding, rising to £259.3 million without it. According to MFT board papers reported by the Health Service Journal (HSJ), MFT must cut its workforce by 14.7 percent—861 full-time equivalent (FTE) posts—and deliver £143.8 million in savings, 26 percent of its costs, by 2030/31.

This is not an isolated failure. The Labour government’s NHS 10-Year Plan, now being implemented by Andy Burnham, demands £17 billion in annual “efficiency savings”, threatens up to 100,000 jobs and transfers £2.5 billion in patient care to private providers each year. 

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The Burnham government’s “priority” of slashing public spending to fund rearmament is driving the cuts. The King’s Fund warned that Starmer’s Defence Investment Plan—adopted in full by Burnham—would draw on NHS capital budgets, leaving hospitals with delayed building projects, outdated scanners and mounting maintenance backlogs. Its policy director, Siva Anandaciva, warned that cutting investment in NHS buildings and equipment “will have a knock-on effect on patient care.”

Underscoring this commitment, Defense Secretary Wes Streeting is providing Ukraine with a minimum £3 billion annually to sustain NATO’s war against Russia. The government will slash tens of billions more from the NHS to fund Burnham’s pledge to raise military and related spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035. The appointment of John Healey as chancellor—who resigned as Starmer’s Defense Secretary demanding a massive increase in military spending—confirms the direction of travel. The NHS is being dismantled to pay for war.

UNISON’s figures expose the scale of the assault, yet its leadership has mounted no opposition. Responding to the mass jobs cull in Kent, the union said it opposes “all compulsory redundancies” and called for “full and genuine consultation”. UNISON, like the other unions, has long used the fig leaf of no compulsory redundancies while collaborating to destroy jobs through “voluntary” means, burdening NHS staff with greater workloads and undermining patient care.

UNISON backed Starmer into Downing Street, hailing Labour’s policies as “moves in the right direction” even as thousands of health workers faced dismissal. UNISON general secretary Andrea Egan, elected last December as a self-styled “left” on a turnout of just 7 percent, has committed to a “constructive working relationship” with Labour, greeting Burnham’s arrival as “the first chance for tangible change in a long time.”

NHS FightBack calls on workers and patients to build independent rank-and-file committees against NHS cuts, privatization and the diversion of public funds to war. Subscribe to our newsletter and contact us today!

14. Workers Struggles: The Americas

Argentina:

One-day protest strikes by government and health workers

Canada:

Unifor finally sets date for strike vote over stalled Stellantis contract

Chile:

Mineworkers strike Centinela Copper Mine

Dominican Republic:

Workers, peasants and retirees protest social conditions

United States:

Hundreds of hotel workers walkout in Chicago 

Pittsburgh nurses rally over benefit takeaways and staffing ratios

Four-week strike of Solvang, California city workers; a battle over wages

15.  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.