Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Netanyahu defends terrorism, mass murder, and genocide at the United Nations
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered an address before
the United Nations General Assembly on Friday in which he vowed to defy
international law, gloated about committing mass murder and terrorism,
and vowed to continue the Gaza genocide in defiance of world public
opinion.
Netanyahu traveled to the United States as his government
deliberately subjected the population of Gaza to the worst famine in
the world, driving the Palestinians from their land and killing dozens
of people every day in its assault on Gaza City.
Netanyahu, who is
facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court on war
crimes charges, traveled to the United States via a jet that flew almost
exclusively over water. He deliberately avoided the airspace of Greece,
Italy, France, and Spain, where he risked apprehension and extradition
to face trial. Once inside US airspace, Netanyahu received the full
protection of the Trump administration, which has vowed to defy the
ICC’s arrest warrant.
The very fact that the United Nations
allowed this fascist mass murderer into the building, let alone gave him
the rostrum to address the General Assembly, is an indictment of the
impotence and complicity of this institution, whose forerunner, the
League of Nations, Lenin accurately called a “thieves’ kitchen.”
Outside
the United Nations building, thousands of people took part in
demonstrations against Netanyahu’s appearance. Inside the hall, the vast
majority of delegates walked out, leaving Netanyahu speaking to a
mostly empty room.
But the American delegation sought to make up
for the walkout by loudly cheering and applauding Netanyahu’s boasts
about the people he has killed and his vows to kill more.
*****
The impudence and absurdity reached even greater heights. Protesting
that he was nothing like Adolf Hitler, Netanyahu declared, “We’re trying
to get them out… Did the Nazis ask the Jews to leave?”
The answer
to this question is “yes.” Prior to the implementation of the “final
solution” in 1941 it was the official policy of the German Nazi Party to
encourage the emigration of Jews from Germany. In fact, more than half
of Germany’s Jews had emigrated from Germany before the start of the
Holocaust due to Nazi policies aimed at forcing the Jewish population to
flee.
In other words, ethnic cleansing and genocide went hand in
hand in Nazi Germany, just as it goes hand in hand in Israel’s rampage
through Gaza.
*****
The Gaza famine is the most rapid decline in the food security of a
population ever recorded and the first modern famine outside the African
continent. It takes place in an enclave whose borders are completely
controlled by Israel, the occupying power, with tons of food stationed
outside its borders, waiting to be allowed in.
The method in
Netanyahu’s statements is simply to take the war crime that Israel is
flagrantly committing before the eyes of the the world and assert the
opposite: that instead of starving the Palestinians, Israel is feeding
them.
It is a variant of Adolf Hitler’s theory of the “big lie,”
which Hitler asserted is believed because the audience “would not
believe others could have the impudence to distort the truth so
infamously.” But in Netanyahu’s case, nobody is expected to believe the
lie, and all that remains is the impudence.
There was one part of Netanyahu’s speech, however, in which he told
the truth. Addressing the leaders of the imperialist powers, Netanyahu
declared, “You know deep down that Israel is fighting your fight.” He
continued, “This past June, when Israel struck Iran’s nuclear
facilities, German Chancellor Mertz admitted the truth. He said, ‘Israel
is doing the dirty work for all of us.’”
*****
We are rapidly approaching two years of mass murder in Gaza, and certain lessons must be drawn.
The
first and most important is the total futility of appealing to
imperialist governments and international institutions to stop the
genocide. All of the imperialist governments are implicated in the Gaza
bloodbath, which is part of a globe-spanning war by the imperialist
powers to subjugate the world. The targets of this global war are not
only in the Middle East, but also in Russia and China.
The same
governments that are sponsoring the Gaza genocide are also presiding
over vast attacks on the social and democratic rights of the working
class. There is a deep-rooted connection between the criminality of the
Gaza genocide, whose foremost international sponsor is Trump, and the
efforts by the White House to establish a dictatorship in the United
States.
The movement against war must be fused with the struggle
to defend the social and democratic rights of the working class in a
common effort to end the capitalist system, which is the root cause of
imperialist barbarism and dictatorship.
2. Attempted prosecution of Kneecap’s Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh collapses
Britain’s Labour government suffered a humiliating defeat on Friday
when its effort to prosecute Liam Óg Ó hAnnaidh of rap trio Kneecap on
terrorism charges was thrown out of court.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) tried to prosecute
Ó hAnnaidh—whose stage name is Mo Chara, “My Friend” in Irish—after he
picked up a Hezbollah flag thrown on stage during a performance at the
O2 Forum in Kentish Town on November 21, 2024. For this, he was
charged—now proven unlawfully—under section 13(1)(b) and (3) of the
Terrorism Act 2000.
*****
Such was the fervor of the authorities to silence an outspoken and
powerful voice against the Gaza genocide that they botched basic
procedures, meaning that chief magistrate Paul Goldspring, at Woolwich
Crown Court, was forced to declare the case “unlawful” and “null”.
*****
Following the verdict, cheers went up in court from the public
gallery. Speaking to supporters outside, Ó hAnnaidh said, “This entire
process was never about me. It was never about any threat to the public,
it was never about terrorism—a word used by your government to
discredit people you oppress.
“It was always about Gaza. About
what happens if you dare to speak up. As people from Ireland we know
oppression, colonialism, famine and genocide.
“We have suffered
and still suffer under ‘your empire’. Your attempts to silence us have
failed, because we are right, and you are wrong. We will not be silent.
“We
said we would fight you in your court and we would win. We have. If
anyone on this planet is guilty of terrorism, it is the British state.
Free Palestine!”
*****
Kneecap first came to global prominence in the US earlier this year, winning mass support in the process, as they led thousands of music fans in a chant of “Free Palestine”
at the Coachella Festival. In actions repeated at all their concerts
since, Kneecap performed before projections that read, “Israel is
committing genocide against the Palestinian people.”
It is for
this principled stance, which has galvanised other artists to speak out
against the genocide, that Kneecap incurred the wrath of the Starmer
government which is complicit in every one of Israel’s war crimes over
the last two years.
3. Latin America’s “Pink tide” governments slam Trump at UN, while collaborating with Pentagon
The UN General Assembly this week heard some criticism of US
President Donald Trump from a group of Latin American presidents
associated with the so-called Pink Tide.
Trump’s fascist rant
Tuesday morning, in which he boasted of “using the supreme power of the
United States military” to blow up small boats and murder civilians in
the southern Caribbean, was sandwiched between speeches by so-called
left Latin American heads of state, whose response to these acts of
wanton murder ranged from the cowardly to the more pointed.
*****
The economic realities behind Washington’s perception of China as a
strategic threat to the interests of US imperialism in what it long
regarded contemptuously as its “own backyard” are well known. China’s
trade with the [Latin American] region has expanded from $14.62 billion 2001 to $483
billion in 2022, making it the number one trading partner for virtually
every country south of Panama. Non-financial foreign direct investment
by China-based companies soared from less than $1 billion in 2001 to a
cumulative total of $193.2 billion by the end of 2022, much of it in
strategic facilities ranging from ports and power grids to 5G
infrastructure. Chinese financial institutions have also become major
lenders to the region.
*****
In testimony before a US congressional panel in April, Adm. Alvin
Holsey, chief of US SOUTHCOM, sounded the alarm. China’s gains in the
region “threaten the safety, stability, security, and sovereignty of all
nations in our shared neighborhood,” he said. “Time is not on our side.
The Western Hemisphere is suffering from an erosion of democratic
capitalism.”
Latin America, the admiral declared, is “on the front
lines of a decisive and urgent contest to define the future of our
world. China is assailing U.S. interests in every theater… jeopardizing
freedom of maneuver, access, and influence in our near-abroad.” He went
on to outline the predatory interests driving US policy, noting that the
region is “home to abundant natural resources, including 20 percent of
the world’s oil reserves, 25 percent of its strategic metals, 30 percent
of its forest area, 31 percent of its fishing areas and 32 percent of
its renewable freshwater resources.” It is scarcely an accident that the
current focus of US aggression, Venezuela, boasts the largest crude oil
reserves on the planet.
*****
As Washington prepares for war with China, seeking to offset the loss
of its global economic hegemony through the use of military force,
there can be no doubt that it will call on its network of US-trained and
bribed right-wing Latin American military officers to solidify its iron
grip over US imperialism’s “own backyard.”
The critical remarks
delivered by some Latin American presidents at the UN General Assembly
were a bid to mollify the overwhelming hostility and anger of the broad
masses of working people toward the policies of economic and military
aggression that the Trump administration is pursuing in the region.
More
than speeches at the UN from heads of governments subservient to US
imperialism are needed, however, if Latin America is to save itself from
a new round of blood-stained military dictatorships and imperialist
war. For this, only an independent revolutionary movement of the working
class will suffice. Workers of the region must unite, and forge an
unbreakable unity with their class brothers and sisters in the US and
internationally in the fight to overthrow capitalist rule, disband the
US-backed armed forces and reconstruct society on socialist foundations.
4. Zarah Sultana speaks in Sheffield as Britain’s pseudo-left reaffirms full support for Jeremy Corbyn’s Your Party
Zarah Sultana, co-founder of Your Party, was the featured speaker at a
400-strong meeting on Wednesday night hosted by Sheffield Trades Union
Council. It was her first public appearance since last week’s eruption
of factional warfare pitting Sultana against former Labour leader Jeremy
Corbyn and his group of Independent Alliance MPs, threatening to split
Your Party before it had even been launched.
Sultana used her
appearance to mend fences and confirm Your Party’s launch, based on
appeals for left unity. She found a willing audience.
Just six days earlier, Sultana defied Corbyn, launching a membership
registration portal without his prior approval. She emailed Your Party’s
database—more than 850,000 sign-ups—asking them to join. A second
email, a few hours later, signed by Corbyn and his group of Independents
(Ayoub Khan, Adnan Hussain, Iqbal Mohamed, and Shockat Adam) declared
that Sultana’s email was “unauthorised”. They wrote: “Legal advice is
being taken... If any direct debits have been set up, they should be
immediately cancelled.”
Sultana fired back that she had instructed
specialist defamation lawyers, condemning “politically motivated”
attacks against her. She said she was being frozen out of
decision-making by a “sexist boys’ club”, citing Corbyn’s backers, led
by his former Chief of Staff Karie Murphy, with sole financial and
constitutional control “over our conference”. She called for a meeting
with Corbyn to agree on procedures for a founding conference, demanding,
“No stitch-ups, no coronations: the members must decide.”
But on
Sunday, Sultana fell on her sword. She announced she had withdrawn legal
proceedings and was “determined to reconcile”. She was engaged in
“ongoing discussions with Jeremy”, stating, “Both Jeremy and I remain
committed to making this project a success—and we can all confirm that
the conference will go ahead as planned in November.”
In
Sheffield, Sultana’s audience of left-talking trade union bureaucrats,
middle-class community activists, retirees, a large turnout of the
Socialist Workers Party (SWP), Socialist Party (SP) and other
pseudo-left groups, and some students made clear that all was forgiven.
5. Cover-ups continue over fatal failure of emergency phone system in Australia
Both Optus, the telecommunications firm directly involved, and the
Albanese Labor government are trying to deny culpability, both immediate
and longer-term, for a 13-hour breakdown in Australia’s triple-zero
emergency phone system on September 18.
More than a week on, the
public is still being provided with scant information, even though it
was reported that several people, including an eight-week-old baby, died
after more than 630 callers could not get through to the 000 number in
South Australia, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and western
New South Wales.
Western Australian police confirmed last Saturday a fourth person—a
Perth man aged 49—had died during the outage. Other confirmed deaths
were another Perth man, aged 74, and a 68-year-old woman from Adelaide.
While the death of the eight-week-old baby in Gawler, near Adelaide, was
initially linked to the meltdown, South Australian police later said
preliminary investigations found the outage was “unlikely” to have
contributed to the child’s death.
Other fatalities or harmful
outcomes may still emerge. Of the 631 customers known to have failed to
connect, 86 reportedly eventually reached triple-zero through the Optus
network, and 65 reached emergency services by switching to another
carrier, such as Telstra or TPG. That left at least 480 customers who
could not get through at all, some of whom have spoken to the media
about the anxiety and trauma this caused.
*****
This failure, the second such disaster in less than two years, has
shocked the population by showing the dubious reliability of the
triple-zero system, which is a life-and-death issue.
It has also
highlighted the growing human toll of governments, Labor and
Liberal-National Coalition alike over the past three decades, selling
off the essential telecommunications services to corporate operators
driven by profit.
*****
This week, Optus, now wholly-owned by Singtel, a Singapore
government-backed telco conglomerate, admitted that the triple-zero
failure lasted far longer than it initially reported, and continued for
13 hours after several customers first reported the breakdown, which
began at 12.30 a.m. on Thursday September 18, to Optus call centers.
Last
Wednesday, Optus chief executive Stephen Rue claimed that unspecified
preliminary internal investigations indicated that “human error” had
caused the meltdown, not any lack of investment by the company or the
outsourcing of its call centers overseas. “That’s not an investment
issue, that’s people not following process,” he told the media, long
before any official inquiry is even convened.
This is typical of
the corporate elite, blaming workers, not systemic profit-driven
cost-cutting, for catastrophes, and confident of government support.
6. Trump Justice Department indicts former FBI director James Comey
Trump’s newly appointed US attorney for the Eastern District of
Virginia, Lindsey Halligan, secured a two-count indictment against Comey
from a grand jury on charges of making false statements to Congress and
obstructing Congress. The charges carry a maximum jail sentence of five
years. The grand jury refused to endorse a third count requested by
Halligan. Comey is scheduled to appear for arraignment on October 9.
Comey
served as FBI director from 2013 to 2017, when he was fired by Trump.
He oversaw the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into alleged ties
between Russia and the Trump election campaign that was begun under the
Obama administration. This was a propaganda exercise organized by the
Democratic Party in pursuit of its plans for war against Russia and
concerns that Trump was not sufficiently on board. During the 2016
election campaign, the New York Times, the main mouthpiece of
the Democrats, published a column by Paul Krugman headlined, “Donald
Trump, the Siberian Candidate,” accusing Trump of being a stooge of
Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Trump and Comey became bitter
enemies, and during his first term Trump repeatedly called for the
prosecution of Comey as well as Hillary Clinton and other opponents
within the US political establishment. Trump pledged to use his second
term to carry through retribution in the name of the MAGA movement
against those who played roles in his two impeachments and numerous
criminal and civil prosecutions, including for the attempted coup of
January 6, 2021.
Trump’s direct hand in the indictment of Comey
was brazen and blatant. Last Saturday, September 20, Trump posted a
statement on his social media platform, Truth Social, lambasting
Attorney General Pam Bondi for failing to indict Comey as well as New
York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff.
James headed up a lawsuit against Trump’s business empire that led to a
massive civil judgment against him. Schiff, as a member of the House of
Representatives, led the first impeachment of Trump on charges of
interfering in the dispatch of US arms to Ukraine. The Department of
Justice is investigating James and Schiff for mortgage fraud.
“We
can’t delay any longer,” Trump wrote. “JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
The previous day he forced out Erik Siebert, the US attorney for the
Eastern District of Virginia, whom he had appointed, because Siebert
opposed indicting Comey for lack of evidence to sustain a prosecution.
In this, Siebert was backed by the Justice Department career prosecutors
in the district.
On Monday, Trump appointed Halligan to succeed
Siebert. Halligan was one of Trump’s personal lawyers and a White House
aide involved in the attack on the Smithsonian Institution. She is an
insurance lawyer who has no prosecutorial experience. Nonetheless,
despite the reservations of career prosecutors, she made a decision to
go ahead with the prosecution of Comey within hours of taking office.
*****
In addition to James and Schiff, Trump and members of his administration
have called for criminal investigations of former CIA Director John
Brennan, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. After issuing a presidential
memorandum Thursday calling for a crackdown against “radical left
terrorism,” Trump explicitly named billionaire Democratic donors George
Soros and Reid Hoffman as likely targets.
7. A socialist perspective in the struggle against genocide and world war
This is a statement that will be distributed by members of the Socialist Equality Party (Germany) at an anti-genocide event and rally to take place in the vicinity of the Straße des 17. Juni & Großer Stern near Berlin's Victory Column.
8. Trump memorandum brands anti-fascism and opposition to capitalism as “domestic terrorism”
On September 25, President Donald Trump issued National Security
Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7): “Countering Domestic Terrorism and
Organized Political Violence.” NSPM-7 is a fascist blueprint for
mobilizing the entire repressive apparatus of the American state—the
FBI, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Department of Justice (DOJ),
State Department, Treasury, and the military—against all political
opposition on the left.
*****
In order to manufacture the image of a unified, centrally directed
left-wing terror network, NSPM-7 strings together entirely unrelated
incidents—protests against police, opposition to ICE, the killing of
United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson and assassination attempts on Trump
and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh—and presents them as parts of
a single conspiracy. This deliberate conflation creates the mirage of a
vast, organized movement of “domestic terrorism” on the left, even
though no evidence has emerged connecting these events.
Unsurprisingly,
the memorandum is silent on right-wing political violence. It does not
mention the January 6 coup attempt, when Trump, with the backing of
fascist militias, the Republican Party, large sections of the
police-military-intelligence apparatus and elements of the Supreme Court
sought to overturn the 2020 election and establish a presidential
dictatorship. It ignores the long trail of murders and attacks carried
out by racists, religious zealots and neo-Nazis over decades, including
the recent murder of Minnesota Speaker of the House Melissa Hortman and
her husband Mark.
It says nothing of the constant incitement to
violence from Trump himself and his political allies, including
instances of Trump and his allies joking about the hammer attack on Paul
Pelosi or calling for the deportation of Democratic politicians such as
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Zohran Mamdani. There is not a word
on the Republican embrace of Great Replacement theory rhetoric which has
animated mass shootings in the US and internationally for over decade.
This
selective accounting is not an oversight. The greatest purveyor of
political violence in the world and the greatest threat to the
democratic rights of everyone, inside and outside the United States, is
the US government itself, led by Trump, but supported by both the
Democrats and Republicans.
Yet NSPM-7 presents “anti-fascism” and left-wing opposition to
genocide, forced disappearances and police violence as the terrorist
menace.
*****
By treating political beliefs as the “animating threads” of terrorism,
NSPM-7 provides a pseudo-legal justification for the persecution of
individuals and organizations on the basis of their political
convictions. It is a direct attack on the First Amendment.
*****
ICE, which is presently kidnapping and deporting immigrants—including
US citizens—is positioned in the memorandum as a primary victim of
supposed left-wing violence. As of this writing, not a single ICE
officer has been killed on the job, period. This sleight of hand turns
reality on its head: the same agency terrorizing working class
immigrants is presented as under siege, justifying more repression.
The
White House released an accompanying “Fact Sheet” elevating “attacks on
ICE officers” and the harassment of billionaires as existential
threats, while erasing the January 6 coup and decades of fascist terror.
The omissions are deliberate. As with the Reichstag Fire Decree of
1933, the aim is to transform isolated incidents into a pretext for the
destruction of democratic rights and the persecution of left-wing
opposition.
NSPM-7 follows directly from Trump’s September 23 Executive Order
designating “Antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization.” As the World Socialist Web Site explained:
The
Trump White House has now taken the unprecedented step of branding
“Antifa”… as a domestic terrorist organization. The order has no basis
in law, but it provides the pseudo-legal framework for targeting
left-wing political opposition.
Together, the EO and
NSPM-7 amount to a declaration of war on anti-fascist opposition. They
criminalize dissent, invert the reality of political violence in
America, and unleash the state against the left while covering for the
fascist forces nurtured by Trump himself.
*****
As of this writing, not a single leading Democrat, including Senator
Chuck Schumer, Senator Bernie Sanders, former President Barack Obama,
Representative Hakeem Jeffries or Representative Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, has posted a word on social media opposing NSPM-7. Their
silence is not incidental. It reflects the Democratic Party’s
longstanding collaboration with Trump on the central pillars of his
authoritarian program, above all, immigration enforcement and the
strengthening of the repressive apparatus of the state.
n January, a majority of House Democrats joined Republicans in
passing the reactionary Laken Riley Act, which mandates the detention
and deportation of immigrants on the basis of mere accusations. In
March, Schumer personally delivered the key votes in the Senate to
secure passage of a government funding package that kept the deportation
machine fully operational, even as Trump escalated his mass roundups.
Far from constituting an opposition, the Democrats’ record shows them as
enablers of Trump’s fascistic agenda, ensuring that the state remains
armed against the working class while political dissent is criminalized.
The
lesson of NSPM-7, and of the Democrats’ silence in the face of Trump’s
latest fascist directive, is that the defense of democratic rights
cannot be entrusted to the Democratic Party. This is the very party that
paved the way for Trump’s return to power through its own war policies,
its defense of Wall Street, its slanders against anti-genocide
protesters and its refusal to mobilize against the far right.
9. Trump signs executive order approving takeover of TikTok by US investment consortium
On Thursday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order
approving the TikTok divestiture plan, allowing the popular social media
app to continue operating in the US under majority ownership by
American investors, including tech company Oracle, private equity firm
Silver Lake, and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The
order implements requirements from a bipartisan national security law
passed by Congress in 2024 mandating Chinese parent ByteDance to reduce
its US ownership to less than 20 percent, with the remaining shares
divided among an American investor consortium and ByteDance’s previous
stakeholders.
*****
The idea that the US government and its corporate partners are going to
safeguard the data of Americans is an absurdity. As documented by Edward
Snowden in 2013, illegal military-intelligence surveillance of the
electronic communications and internet activity of the US public, with
the support of the telecommunications industry, has been going on for
decades.
*****
The takeover of TikTok’s US operations was triggered by anti-China
hysteria whipped up by both parties of US imperialism over the past five
years. Presided over by the Trump administration, the deal includes a
multibillion-dollar government fee as a condition of the transfer.
*****
The platform’s powerful recommendation algorithm, which is credited with
driving the app’s explosive popularity, will be transferred in code
form and re-engineered in the US. The US consortium will have exclusive
control over retraining and deploying the algorithm for American users.
While ByteDance maintains a substantial minority interest, it loses all
access and oversight of user data and algorithm modifications in the US.
*****
Although he began his 2024 campaign denouncing Chinese ownership of
TikTok in xenophobic terms, Trump shifted his position as he began using
it to spread his fascist political ideology. The shift underscores the
calculated effort to turn what was once a propaganda campaign over
“national security” into a massive business opportunity for the American
financial oligarchy while also continuing to whip up anti-Chinese
sentiments.
Indeed, much of the justification for the transaction is grounded in
fear-mongering about foreign manipulation, data theft and hostile
influence. These narratives, stoked by both major parties, provided the
political cover required to advance what is, ultimately, a theft of a
cultural giant by the US financial elite led by the gangster-in-chief in
the White House.
*****
Although no further last-minute interventions are expected from
Beijing, as with all business deals involving massive sums of money,
nothing is truly certain until all signatures are in place, and the
final approval is delivered from both Washington and Beijing.
The
TikTok takeover is an example of the process of “decoupling” that has
been the subject of debate by the US ruling class as the relationship
between the US and China heads for economic and military conflict. At
the same time, the Chinese are willing to make the TikTok deal despite
its negative financial impact because it allows ByteDance to maintain
some level of participation while avoiding a full US ban of the app. By
agreeing to relinquish control of the core technical platform and
majority ownership, ByteDance retains a commercial interest in TikTok.
Meanwhile, the deal is viewed by Beijing as a concession amid the broader US-China
negotiations on tariffs, technology and geopolitical issues and averts,
for the time being, a total cutoff from the lucrative US market.
10. War propaganda and militarism on children’s TV in Germany
“Even children must become ‘fit for war’”—could have been the appropriate title for the Logo! broadcast about conscription earlier this year. Logo! is the news program produced by state broadcasters ARD/ZDF for children. Since 1997, Logo! has
been broadcast on the children’s channel KiKa and transmitted daily
since 2010. The no.front segment recently debated the question “Should
there be compulsory military service again?” The segment can be watched here in German.
*****
This single broadcast did not come out of nowhere. On the Logo! website,
under the keyword “Bundeswehr,” there are 33 entries—from the
trivialisation of the Afghanistan deployment to a sentimental video
about “Papa as a soldier” to an explanation of the new Veterans’ Day. But not a word about the Nazi past of the Bundeswehr, right-wing extremist networks or abuse in the forces.
The Logo! example
shows a profound upheaval in post-war German society. Despite the
continuity of old Nazis in business, politics and the civil service,
German imperialism was forced to eat humble pie after the end of World
War II in 1945. Subsequently, broad sections of the population were
shaped by a pacifist approach to education and skepticism about war.
As
recently as a few years ago, parents from the Green milieu expressed
outrage if children played “shooting” games or took on warlike roles.
This
is not the place for a comprehensive discussion of the pedagogical
background. The fact is: while opposition to war remains deeply rooted
in the working class, a pacifist upbringing became a political problem
for the ruling class at the latest with the declared “new era” and the
return of German militarism from 2013 onward.
*****
The repulsive Logo! broadcast fits into this general shift
to the right. Since the war in Ukraine, politicians and the media have
been increasingly dropping their mask. The end of pacifist education
goes hand in hand with the bankruptcy of pacifist politics. The
Greens—once a self-declared pacifist party—are today the most militant
mouthpiece of German militarism.
Today
all parties in the Bundestag (parliament) agree that Germany must also
defend its interests by military means. Chancellor Merz recently
declared that Germany must once again be “the strongest army in Europe.”
Military
strategists have long been aware that the low level of support among
the population is a weak point. “Operationsplan Deutschland,” therefore
identified the “mindset of the population” as one of the greatest
challenges.
Everyone has seen the aggressive Bundeswehr
recruitment posters. But its presence at city festivals, trade fairs, in
schools and on social media has also increased massively—especially on
YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. Target group: young people who are still
malleable.
The Bundeswehr has been present for years at the
Gamescom fair in Cologne. On bundeswehr.de, it explains why “precisely
the gaming community is so interesting” for the Bundeswehr. Gamers have
“trained hand-eye coordination, technical understanding and the ability
to quickly master complex systems”—ideal prerequisites for cyber
operations or electronic warfare.
The Bundeswehr markets itself as
a “versatile, highly specialised employer” offering young people
“exciting perspectives”—and exploits precisely those social ills that
the ruling politicians themselves have created.
In doing so, it
follows the model of the U.S. Army: using social devastation and poverty
to recruit people voluntarily as cannon fodder.
Since the suspension of conscription—which is now to be reactivated—the
Bundeswehr has recruited thousands of minors every year. In 2024, with a
sad record: 2,203 under-18s were recruited. Germany is thereby
violating UN resolutions such as the Paris Principles and the Convention
on the Rights of the Child, which outlaw child soldiers.
11. Ukraine’s voiceless army: Ukrainian deserters speak out
While the mass desertion of personnel from the Ukrainian Armed Forces
has already become one of the largest acts of civil disobedience in the
country’s history since 1991, there is almost complete silence about it
in the foreign media. Since the end of last year, the number of criminal
cases under Article 407 (unauthorized leaving of a military unit, or
SZCh) and Article 408 (desertion) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine has
remained stable at approximately 17,000 per month. In the first eight
months of 2025, 142,711 criminal proceedings under these articles were
registered, and a total of 265,843 cases have been registered in Ukraine
since the beginning of the full-scale invasion as of September 1, 2025.
12. State law requires Tennessee public school teachers to teach gun safety starting in kindergarten
In an unprecedented assault on education that pushes the
normalization of firearms in the classroom, Tennessee has become the
first state to force educators to teach gun safety.
House Bill
(HB) 2882, which passed the Tennessee General Assembly on May 1, 2024,
went into effect with the start of the 2025-2026 school year. Every
charter school and local education agency (LEA) must “provide students
with age-appropriate and grade appropriate instruction on firearm
safety” on an annual basis. The legislation prevents districts from
opting out.
The bill states that such instruction should begin at the “earliest appropriate grade.”But the Outcomes and Guidance manual,
developed by the Tennessee Department of Education in collaboration
with the Tennessee Department of Safety & Homeland Security and
Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, clearly indicates that instruction
will begin at the Kindergarten level.
*****
No district has adopted the policy so far, yet its very passage
reveals the reactionary fantasy underpinning it: the notion that arming
“good guys with guns” is the only way to stop “bad guys with guns.” This
logic not only evades the social questions behind mass shootings but
also entrenches the broader militarization of schools and American
society as a whole.
The
group Everytown for Gun Safety shows that Tennessee ranks 12th in the
nation for gun deaths, with 158 unintentional shootings by children
between 2015-2023, the third highest of any state. Yet lawmakers proudly
maintain some of the weakest gun laws in the country: there is no
requirement for secure firearm storage, and even the basic permit for
concealed carry has been scrapped. Against this backdrop, the push for
“gun safety education” in schools is not to protect children, but to
disguise the deadly status quo and palm responsibility onto individuals.
*****
Neither of the major capitalist parties offer a path to ending mass
shootings or gun violence in the United States. These tragedies are
symptoms of a society in an advanced stage of degeneration, where
decades of endless war, staggering inequality, police brutality, ICE
raids against students and families, and the dismantling of public
infrastructure, have created the conditions for recurring eruptions of
mass violence.
Amid the deepening crisis of capitalism, public
education has become a central target. The ruling class seeks to roll
back decades of social progress, crush opposition, and extinguish
critical thought and culture. Defending the right to free, high-quality
education demands a conscious fight against capitalism and imperialist
war-not futile appeals to the courts or the Democrats.
Trump’s
so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”, passed with bipartisan support, cut $12
billion from public schools, on top of the expiration of pandemic aid.
The results have been devastating: teacher layoffs, overcrowded
classrooms, gutted health services, and a surge in child hunger.
13. United States: Dundee
Engine nearly six months after workplace death: “The machines are
running at full blast, and not a word is being said about Ronald Adams”
Hundreds of Stellantis workers in Dundee, Michigan, returned to work
on Monday, September 22. They had been laid off for six months or more
from the engine plant where Ronald Adams Sr., a 63-year-old machine
repairman, was crushed to death on April 7. At a meeting for returning
workers, management and United Auto Workers officials discussed new
production targets but maintained a guilty silence about Adams.
It
has been nearly six months since the well-respected skilled tradesman,
father and grandfather was killed while performing maintenance on an
industrial washer in an enclosed factory cell. An automated hoist, also
known as a gantry, suddenly activated without warning, pinning Adams to a
conveyor and inflicting horrific crushing injuries to his torso.
In
nearly a half-year, Stellantis management, the UAW and the Michigan
Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) officials have
not given any explanation of the causes of the workplace fatality to his
family and co-workers.
“I think everybody has been brought back
to work now,” a Dundee worker whom we will call “Kevin” to protect him
from retaliation. “They are definitely ramping up for full production.
They called us into the auditorium and said the plant had to build
11,000 Hurricane engines by November 3.”
*****
On May 13, the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File
Committees (IWA-RFC) launched an independent investigation into the
death of Ronald Adams Sr. After interviewing dozens of workers at Dundee
and other auto plants, Adams family members, experts on workplace
safety and other relevant witnesses, the IWA-RFC presented the initial
findings of its investigation at a public hearing on July 27, which was
held in Ronald Adams’ community in Detroit.
Stellantis was more
than a year behind the $100 million retooling of the Dundee factory,
which is set to produce hybrid-ready and HEMI V.8 engines for the 2026
Jeep Cherokee and Ram 1500 models and European brands. Witnesses
detailed how management, with the blessing of the UAW bureaucracy,
regularly cut corners on safety to reduce cost overruns and shorten the
downtime period.
A safe lockout/tagout system, designed to cut
power to machines before maintenance and repair, was virtually
non-existent. Management acknowledged its widespread distribution of
so-called “cheater keys,” which can bypass a lockout. Contract workers
from Fives Cinetic, who programmed the specific washer and gantry system
and worked with Adams before he was killed by the automated hoist,
testified that they were never interviewed by the company, the UAW or
MIOSHA.
*****
Autoworkers must reject economic nationalism and unify with workers
internationally against job cuts, deadly working conditions,
dictatorship and war. Earlier this week, Stellantis announced temporary
layoffs at several plants in Europe, due to lagging sales and
competition from lower-costing Chinese EVs. Several European states are
on the verge or already in recession and imposing the cost of military
rearmament on the working class.
Production of the Alfa Romeo
Tonale and Fiat Panda vehicles is being suspended in Pomigliano, Italy,
from September 29, after the company meets with local labor union
officials. Stellantis is also halting production of the Opel and DS cars
at its Poissy plant near Paris from October 13 to October 31. Other
factories suspending production include Tychy in Poland, Eisenach in
Germany and two plants in Spain.
14. Australian research exposes mental health crisis among teachers
Two significant studies this year have revealed a mounting crisis
within the education sector in Australia, with teachers facing severe
mental health challenges.
The research shows the toll being taken
by crushing workloads and prolonged exposure to student and family
trauma. The studies paint a grim picture of a profession under immense
strain, with dire implications for teacher retention and student
outcomes.
The first study, entitled Teachers’ workload, turnover intentions, and mental health,
was conducted by a research team from the University of New South Wales
(UNSW) and the Black Dog Institute, a renowned mental health research
institution. Surveying nearly 5,000 Australian primary and secondary
teachers in 2022–24, it is one of the most comprehensive investigations
into the mental health of educators to date.
The study found that
teachers were experiencing symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress at
levels three times the national average. For instance, the average
score for depressive symptoms on the Depression, Anxiety & Stress
Scale (DASS) among teachers was 15.40, compared to a population norm of
5.02. Anxiety symptoms were at 12.12 versus 3.36 and stress at 21.80
versus 8.10.
The research said 90.7 percent of teachers reported
moderate-to-extremely severe levels of stress. Furthermore, nearly 70
percent of participants reported moderate-to-extremely severe symptoms
of both depression (70.5 percent) and anxiety (68.9 percent).
A
central cause was unmanageable workload. The research made a distinction
between the “core” work of teaching—planning and delivering lessons—and
the ballooning “non-core” tasks that now dominate teachers’ time. These
included administrative duties, excessive data collection and tracking,
and compliance with various policies and accountability frameworks.
*****
The second study, published in May, The Silent Cost: Impact and Management of Secondary Trauma in Educators,
revealed another serious threat to teacher mental health: secondary
traumatic stress (STS). Led by Dr. Adam Fraser in collaboration with
Deakin University, this research surveyed almost 2,300 educators and
collected over 1,000 detailed trauma stories.
The study said
educators had effectively become the “social workers of society,” yet
the education system was dramatically under-prepared and under-resourced
to support educators. STS occurs from repeated exposure to the
traumatic experiences of others. For teachers, this involves
consistently hearing students’ distressing personal stories, witnessing
their struggles, and carrying the emotional burden of their challenges.
*****
Taken together, the two studies show that teachers are being crushed
by an ever-expanding administrative workload, while also being asked to
deal with the increasing and complex social and emotional traumas of
their students and families, a role for which they are largely untrained
and unsupported.
The UNSW research also reported that rural and
remote teachers reported far higher levels of depression than those in
metropolitan schools. These communities, already disadvantaged by
distance and scarce resources, were those where teachers struggled most.
The
studies did not directly link traumatic stress to school socio-economic
status, but in working-class communities teachers carry a heavier
emotional load. With little systemic support, these schools are hit
twice—by the hardships they face and by the erosion of the workforce.
The
studies show that these conditions are worsening under the Albanese
Labor government and its state counterparts. They continue to cut public
education funding in real terms while funneling billions into elite
private schools and pouring billions more into military programs like
AUKUS.
The teacher unions have played a pivotal role in enforcing
these conditions. Through sell-out agreements on wages, workloads, and
class sizes, they have not only suppressed resistance but also been
complicit in exacerbating the crisis facing teachers. Other than
advising that teachers report their conditions to the Education
Department, they encourage teachers to take courses on classroom
management—placing at the feet of individual educators the
responsibility of dealing with the myriad social conditions of their
charges. While posturing as defenders of educators they function as
enforcers for government and corporate demands.
15. New Zealand doctors strike amid worsening healthcare crisis
Around 6,000 senior doctors and dentists employed in public hospitals
across New Zealand held a two-day strike on September 23-24, in
opposition to the National Party-led government’s proposal to slash
their pay.
Pickets were held outside hospitals and MPs’ offices,
including those of Health Minister Simeon Brown in Auckland and Finance
Minister Nicola Willis in Wellington.
The doctors previously struck for 24 hours on May 1. This was followed by strikes by tens of thousands of nurses and high school teachers, who are facing similar attacks on their wages and conditions as a result of the government’s austerity measures.
The
government is determined to impose a benchmark for wage reductions
across the public and private sector, to make workers pay for the
economic crisis and the record increase in military spending.
*****
Like nurses and other healthcare workers, doctors are also angry
about the severe chronic workforce shortages across the public health
system. The crisis of under-staffing has worsened under successive
governments, including the 2017–2023 Labour Party-led government.
One
psychiatrist in Wellington, Jeremy McMinn, told Radio NZ that even with
two days on strike, he would still work 56 hours during the week, doing
the work of three other doctors on one day.
Deralie Flower, a striking doctor in Auckland, told Stuff that
low wages were pushing doctors to move to Australia. “In gynecology,
oncology, for example, we are desperately short of those surgeons in New
Zealand. Our country is meant to have 16 and we currently have six,”
she said.
*****
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon called for binding
arbitration—letting the doctors’ dispute be adjudicated by a third
party—which ASMS has so far rejected.
Luxon told the New Zealand Herald, “we are the biggest spending government ever, in the history of New Zealand, on healthcare.” This year’s budget,
however, only increased health spending by 4.77 percent ($1.37
billion)—not enough to address the crisis of unmet need or keep pace
with inflation and population growth.
Instead
of investing in the public system, the government is promoting further privatization by paying private hospitals to carry out tens of thousands
of medical procedures.
Meanwhile, $12 billion has been allocated
to military spending over four years in order to participate in US-led
imperialist wars, including the looming conflict with China. The drive
to double military spending, which is fully supported by the opposition
Labour Party, will be paid for by working people, including through cuts
to healthcare and other basic services.
*****
The disputes now unfolding involve more than 100,000 teachers and
healthcare workers—over 3 percent of the workforce. Workers are moving
to the left and are looking for a means to fight back against the
incessant attacks on their jobs, wages and conditions.
The
pro-capitalist union leadership, however, is keeping each dispute
isolated, imposing strict limits on industrial action, and working with
the government to reach sellout agreements that will do nothing to
seriously address the crisis in schools and hospitals. The Public
Service Association, the country’s biggest union, which has facilitated
thousands of job cuts, also openly supports the government’s military
spending.
As the Socialist Equality Group explained in its recent statement,
workers can only move forward by building new organizations—independent
rank-and-file committees—to take their struggles into their own hands,
in opposition to the union bureaucracy and all the capitalist parties.
These committees must unite healthcare workers with teachers and other
workers across the country and internationally.
16. Sydney police officer charged with assault of pro-Palestinian protester
A 33-year-old police officer was charged last week with assault
occasioning bodily harm over the violent arrest of Hannah Thomas at a
small pro-Palestinian protest in Sydney last June.
Thomas, a former Greens candidate and lawyer, had attended the
gathering in the suburb of Belmore as a legal observer. It was held
outside the facility of SEC Plating. The company has been accused by
activists of complicity in the Gaza genocide because of claims that it
has been involved in the global supply chain for the production of F-35
fighter jets.
The few dozen protesters who gathered on June 27
were met by a massive police mobilisation. The police almost immediately
declared the protest “unauthorised” and demanded that the group
disperse, before charging the crowd and violently arresting several
demonstrators.
In the course of her arrest, Thomas received
horrific facial injuries, which threatened her with the loss of sight in
her right eye.
Amid substantial public shock at images of Thomas
bloodied and battered, the leadership of the New South Wales (NSW)
Police, along with the NSW state and federal Labor governments, defended
the police assault and blamed the demonstrators, including Thomas
herself.
The charging of the officer exposes those statements as a
cover-up, based on slanders against the victims and a false
presentation of what the cops carried out.
The police and the
governments clearly hoped that the matter would go away. But Thomas has
been defiant, strongly denouncing the assault on her, connecting it to a
broader crackdown on pro-Palestinian actions by the NSW Labor
government and initiating civil court action against the police.
Under
those conditions, the charging of the officer, almost three months
after the police attack, is clearly an effort in damage-control. The aim
is to present the attack as simply the result of one “bad apple” who
was overzealous in his duties.
But that is simply a new stage in the cover-up. The charging of the
officer coincided with information coming into the public domain,
strongly indicating that the aggressive police mobilization at the
Belmore protest was planned at the highest levels.
Despite her injuries, police had extraordinarily charged Thomas with
resisting arrest. Three other protesters were also hit with a range of
charges. Those were subsequently dropped by prosecutors and on September
19 a judge awarded Thomas and the three others almost $40,000 in legal
costs.
17. 55,000 Canada Post workers on strike as Liberal government moves to dismantle public postal service
Over 55,000 Canada Post workers walked off the job Thursday in
response to the federal Liberal government’s drive to all but eliminate
postal delivery as a public service. The trigger for the strike was
Transformation, Public Works and Procurement Minister Joël Lightbound’s
announcement of an unprecedented “transformation plan.” It calls for the
federally owned Crown Corporation to dramatically curtail services and
slash tens of thousands of full-time jobs over the next few years.
Letter
carriers and sorting‑plant workers in Atlantic Canada began
spontaneously walking off the job immediately after the minister’s
Thursday afternoon press conference. News of their defiant action
quickly spread via social media. According to information received by
the World Socialist Web Site from rank-and-file workers,
workers also walked out in Manitoba before the Canadian Union of Postal
Workers (CUPW) felt compelled to call a nationwide strike in the early
evening, with the aim of placing themselves at the head of the movement
the better to politically control and suppress it.
For the
second time in less than a year, postal workers find themselves in an
industrial and political struggle that pits them against Canada Post
management, the Liberal government, and corporate Canada as a whole. The
entire ruling class wants to see Canada Post “restructured” to set an
example for the destruction of all public services across the country to
pay for military rearmament, the waging of global war, and the
enrichment of Canada’s financial oligarchy.
Postal workers can
defeat this class war agenda by appealing for all workers to join in
their struggle, since the issues they are fighting for are of paramount
importance to all workers. They include defense of public services and
the right to strike; protection against Amazon-style precarious
employment; and the need to establish workers’ control over the use of
AI and other new technologies, so they are used to lighten the workload
with no loss of pay, not boost worker-exploitation and corporate
profits.
The government of former Bank of Canada and Bank of England governor
Mark Carney, who took over the prime ministership earlier this year, has
seized on the Canada Post crisis to declare war on postal workers and
on the working class as a whole.
With the full-throated support of
the corporate media, the Carney Liberal government is moving to
implement a self-avowed program of “austerity and investment.” Public
services are to be slashed, beginning with a 15 percent cut in federal
discretionary spending over the next three years, and hundreds of
billions diverted to expanding the military, and providing subsidies and
tax cuts for big business and the rich.
Postal workers only got
back the right to strike in May, after they were robbed of it for five
months by a draconian back-to-work order issued by Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau’s Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon last December, after a
month-long strike.
However, CUPW refused to mobilize postal
workers and appeal to the entire working class for support in defending
public services. Instead, it kept the rank and file on a tight leash,
confining them to an overtime ban, which was later replaced by a ban on
delivering unaddressed ad flyers.
Although the union offered no
perspective for carrying forward the struggle, when the Liberal
government intervened against the postal workers yet again, forcing them
to vote in July on Canada Post’s concessionary offers, 70 percent of
the workers, both urban and rural, voted “No.”
*****
The renewal of the struggle by postal workers... has
significance far beyond the immediate dispute. The manner in which the
strike broke out, like the [recent] Air Canada workers’ stand, shows that the
death grip exercised for decades by the union bureaucracy over workers’
struggles is breaking down, and underlines that extremely favorable conditions exist for the postal workers to obtain a powerful response
from other sections of workers if they fight to broaden their struggle.
To
do so, strikers must immediately establish rank-and-file strike
committees to take control of the fight and advance demands based on
what workers need, not what management and government ministers claim is
“affordable.” These committees must take up a struggle against the
corporatist partnership between the union bureaucracy, corporate
management, and the government, repudiating the rotten Canadian
nationalism on which it is based and appealing for support from postal
workers in the US and further afield.
CUPW, CUPE and the wider
union bureaucracy act as arms of the state: policing the workforce,
collaborating with management and blocking any challenge to the profit
system. The union leaderships cover up their indispensable role in
imposing the interests of the ruling elite on the workers with bogus
references to a “Team Canada” that supposedly unites workers and bosses
as one against Trump, when in fact the “team” they are part of is the
one bought, paid for, and sponsored by the financial oligarchy.
The basis to oppose this gang-up against the workers is the closest
alliance between postal workers and other sections of the working class
in the US, Europe, and internationally. Workers everywhere face the same
dangers, including the slashing of jobs and wages, destruction of
public services, and abrogation of their right to strike and other basic
democratic rights in the name of funding wars and with the aim of
enforcing the interests of the capitalist oligarchy through
dictatorship. In the US, the would-be dictator Trump wants to privatize
the US Postal Service, while in Britain the rights of Royal Mail workers
are under systematic attack.
18. United States: Missouri governor to sign legislation implementing gerrymander and ballot initiative crackdown
Just as Texas Governor Greg Abbott redrew congressional districts at
Trump’s urging, Kehoe’s “Missouri First” map slices up urban
working-class and minority populations to dilute their vote and fortify
Republican control. Trump himself publicly urged Missouri Republicans to
pass the plan “AS IS.”
Trump and the Republicans are pulling out
all the stops to prevent the Democrats from retaking control of the US
House in the 2026 elections, a real possibility given the widespread
hatred workers have for Trump’s policies, reflected in a recent Gallup
poll indicating only 29 percent of Americans are satisfied with the
country’s direction.
*****
Democrats have responded with their own partisan gerrymanders. In
California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential
candidate, is attempting to erase five Republican seats by suspending
California’s independent redistricting commission, which was originally
created by voters in 2010.
The assault on democratic rights in
Missouri stands in a long line of such measures in American history.
After the Civil War, the Reconstruction amendments briefly extended the
franchise to formerly enslaved people and opened the possibility of a
more democratic society. But the bourgeoisie, terrified of a united
working class, soon imposed Jim Crow laws, literacy tests, poll taxes
and racially gerrymandered districts to gut those gains.
In the
20th century, Democrats and Republicans alike manipulated electoral
boundaries and voting rules to protect their bipartisan domination over
official politics, while pushing the battles over democracy into courts
and commissions where the results were predetermined. What is taking
place today—the combination of redistricting and the effective veto over
ballot initiatives—represents the latest stage in this reactionary
tradition. The American ruling class, confronted with deep social
crisis, is incapable of responding to even the most elementary
democratic sentiments.
The Democrats, far more fearful of the
emergence of a mass movement outside of their control than they are of
the building of a presidential dictatorship by the fascistic Republican
Party, limit themselves to lawsuits, petitions and their own
anti-democratic maneuvers. This is because both parties are beholden to
Wall Street and the military-police-intelligence complex and share
responsibility for the assault on democratic rights. They have
gerrymandered when it suited them, and they accept the legitimacy of
measures that disenfranchise their own voters so long as capitalist
stability is preserved.
The “gerrymandering wars” are not just partisan squabbles but part of the breakdown of democracy under capitalism.
19. United States: Double state murder: Alabama inmate executed by nitrogen asphyxiation, and a lethal injection in Texas
The United States executed two death row inmates Thursday evening,
September 25—one in Alabama and one in Texas—as the number of
state-sanctioned killings continues to rise. The executions of Geoffrey
Todd West in Alabama and Blaine Milam in Texas brought the national
total of executions to 33, making 2025 the year with the most state
killings since 2014. The US Supreme Court denied both West and Milam’s
final appeals, allowing their executions to proceed.
This uptick
in executions is directly linked to the assault on democratic rights
orchestrated by the Trump administration. Following his inauguration,
Trump signed an executive order titled “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety,”
whose stated aim is to ensure that capital punishment laws are
“respected and faithfully implemented.” This measure directed the
attorney general to challenge those few Supreme Court rulings that limit
the ability of federal and state governments to carry out executions.
The
order also directed the attorney general to seek the death penalty in
federal cases “for all crimes of a severity demanding its use,” with
specific emphasis on cases involving the murder of law enforcement
officers, and any “capital crime committed by an alien illegally present
in this country.”
Just hours before the back-to-back executions
Thursday, Trump signed a presidential memo directing US Attorney General
Pam Bondi to “fully enforce” the death penalty in Washington, D.C. for
federal crimes. The jurisdiction abolished capital punishment in 1981
and residents voted against its reinstatement in a 1992 referendum. The
memo explicitly states that enforcing federal capital punishment remains
a priority for the president.
Taking its cue from the White
House, the state of Florida has passed a bill mandating the automatic
imposition of the death penalty for “unauthorized aliens” convicted of a
capital offense. This nakedly fascistic policy flies in the face of
longstanding US legal precedent and international laws prohibiting
mandatory death sentences.
*****
The state of Alabama executed Geoffrey Todd West, 50, using the new
method of nitrogen hypoxia. West was convicted of the 1997 capital
murder of Margaret Parrish Berry, 33. Berry, a mother of two, was shot
in the back of the head while lying on the floor behind the counter
during a gas station robbery in Etowah County. Court documents indicate
that West, 21 at the time and desperate for cash, killed Berry to ensure
there was no witness after taking just $250 from a cookie can.
*****
West repeatedly expressed deep remorse for the crime, stating he
wished he could “take that back” and that he struggled at 50 to
understand what he did at a much earlier age. West was pronounced dead
at 6:22 p.m. local time at the William C. Holman Correctional Facility
in Atmore.
West’s
execution proceeded despite the opposition of the victim’s family. Will
Berry, one of Margaret Berry’s sons, actively campaigned against the
state murder of West, joining death penalty opponents to protest outside
the Alabama capitol. Berry wrote that executing West would not “bring
my mother back; it will only add to the pain.” He condemned the state’s
action: “I don’t want this man to die. Vengeance isn’t for the state.
It’s for the Lord.”
*****
Geoffrey West was the fifth person executed in Alabama using nitrogen
gas asphyxiation. The development of this grotesque technique—which
involves strapping a mask to the inmate’s face and forcing them to
breathe pure nitrogen, depriving them of oxygen—represents the state’s
desperate scramble to keep the assembly lines of state-sponsored killing
in operation.
*****
Just 18 minutes after West was pronounced dead, Texas carried out the
execution of Blaine Milam, 35, by lethal injection in Huntsville. He was
pronounced dead at 6:40 p.m. local time. Milam was condemned to death
for the December 2008 assault and murder of his fiancé’s 13-month-old
daughter, Amora Bain Carson.
Milam and the child’s mother, who were both 18 at the time, claimed
Amora was possessed by a demon. Over a horrific period of 30 hours, they
subjected the baby to torture in a supposed effort to “exorcise” the
demon. Investigators found Amora’s brutally injured body covered in 24
human bite marks, 18 broken ribs, multiple skull fractures, extensive
injuries to her genitals, cuts and bruises. A forensic pathologist was
unable to determine a specific cause of death due to the sheer number of
injuries to the infant’s body.
Milam’s execution proceeded
despite arguments from his attorneys that his conviction was based on
“now-discredited” bite mark evidence, which a 2016 report noted is
“clearly scientifically unreliable.” His defense also claimed that his
intellectual functioning and adaptive skills were significantly
impaired, meeting the clinical criteria for intellectual disability that
requires exclusions from the death penalty as cruel and unusual
punishment under the Eighth Amendment. The office of Texas Attorney
General Ken Paxton, fascistic Governor Greg Abbott’s partner in attacks
on the US Constitution and democratic rights, ensured the execution
proceeded.
*****
The barbaric US assembly line of death shows no signs of slowing.
Following the double execution of West and Milam, nine more executions
are scheduled in eight states by the end of the year. This trajectory
puts the United States on pace to put at least 42 inmates to death in
2025, a number not reached since 2012. October is anticipated to be a
particularly busy month in US execution chambers, with seven state
killings scheduled, including five over a four-day period, in each in
Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, Missouri and Texas.
20. Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia
Australia:
GrainCorp terminal workers at Newcastle Port strike for better pay and conditions
Keolis Downer bus drivers in Newcastle strike for improved pay offer
CDC bus drivers in Victoria hold fifth strike for pay rise
Dormakaba service and repair workers in New South Wales strike for improved pay rise offer
Ampcontrol electricians in New South Wales strike for higher pay offer
RSPCA animal care workers in South Australia strike against pay cut
DHL Express workers at Brisbane Airport hold second strike for pay parity
Infrabuild Mesh workers in Queensland strike again for improved pay offer
Superior PAK workers in Queensland strike for higher pay
Northern Territory public sector health professionals strike against pay offer
Industrial action by MSS Security workers in Victoria enters sixth week
Bangladesh:
Private bus company workers strike for wage increase
Teachers at non-government secondary schools issue strike threat
India:
Bihar government agricultural research workers strike for pay parity
Hyundai Motor workers in Tamil Nadu reject wage settlement
Tamil Nadu contract power workers demand permanent jobs
Tamil Nadu sanitation workers’ protest shut down by union
Madras Rubber Factory workers in Tamil Nadu strike over exploitation
Pakistan:
Shaheed Benazir Bhutto University workers strike
Water and power utility workers across Pakistan protest privatization
Health workers in Rawalpindi protest sackings
Power-loom workers in Toba Tek Singh protest
Sindh public sector workers strike against pension cut
Sri
Lanka:
School Development Officers maintain their protest
21. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk in 2015
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.
