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The Trump-Putin summit in Alaska and the shift in American geostrategy

News, politics, politics & economics, Trade War, War, World Economy, World War / August 20, 2025

We repost below the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board Statement of August 17, 2025, published Here.

The heads of all the major European powers are heading to Washington today for emergency meetings with US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, following Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday. That meeting, in which Trump warmly embraced Putin and called for a negotiated peace in Ukraine, has set off a political crisis across Europe.

Attending the talks in Washington are German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. They aim to present a united front as they confront the fallout from Trump’s shift in US support for the Ukraine war, hoping they can prevent Trump from abruptly pulling the plug on their entire operation.

In advance of Monday’s talks, debate within the media and among officials in both the United States and Europe centered on whether any settlement would involve binding “security guarantees” for Ukraine and, at the same time, compel Ukraine to surrender territory to Russia. On Sunday, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff told CNN that for the first time Russia had agreed to allow the United States and European powers to extend “Article 5-like protection” to Ukraine, a reference to NATO’s mutual defense clause.

Zelensky called it “a historic decision,” writing on X that the guarantees must provide “protection on land, in the air, and at sea” with Europe’s full participation. At the same time, however, Trump has diverged from Ukraine and the major European powers by backing Putin’s demand that Kiev cede territory, including sections of the Donbas region not currently under Russian control.

That such a change was coming had been evident for some time. The Alaska summit made it official, and the reaction in European capitals has bordered on hysteria, augmented by the fact that Ukraine has suffered a series of military defeats. Whatever they declare publicly, the reality is that without US backing the prosecution of the war in Ukraine becomes untenable. The NATO alliance has been held together until now by Washington’s ferocious hostility toward Russia, a policy spearheaded by the Democratic Biden administration.

Trump, reviving the tradition of the far-right “America Firsters” of the World War II era, speaks for layers of the American ruling class oriented toward war in the Pacific and the confrontation with China. He has coupled this outlook with tariff and trade war measures directed against the European powers. For this faction, disengaging from the conflict with Russia over Ukraine offers potential advantages: securing access to vital resources in Russia and Ukraine, loosening Moscow’s alignment with Beijing, and weakening European imperialism.

Particularly since Trump’s re-election, the US foreign policy establishment has discussed a “reverse Kissinger” strategy. Faced with China’s economic rise, they aim to invert the policy championed in the 1970s by US President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of State Henry Kissinger of allying with China against the Soviet Union. In an article titled “A ‘Reverse Kissinger’?,” the American Enterprise Institute think-tank endorsed attempts to ally with Russia against China, but noted that the Ukraine war was an obstacle to winning over Putin. It wrote:

Moscow and Beijing have been forced together by the war in Ukraine. Ending that war, and mending ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin, could slow the Sino-Russian convergence—and perhaps even make Moscow a partner in containing Beijing. The aspiration is admirable. … It didn’t work, because Putin was less interested in stability than in swallowing Ukraine.

At the same time, any shift in Washington’s policy toward Russia will provoke bitter conflicts within the American state apparatus. For powerful sections of the ruling class, the defeat of Russia remains non-negotiable—not only to salvage the credibility of American imperialism after pouring vast sums into the Ukraine war, but also because they view concessions to Moscow as weakening the broader confrontation with China.

The heads of European imperialism converging on Washington are not only seeking to pressure Trump directly, hoping to play for time if not shift course, but also to rally allies within the American political establishment to block any retreat from the NATO war drive.

However the situation develops, certain fundamental issues must be stressed. First, Trump’s shift on Ukraine is not a “peace policy.” His support for the genocide in Gaza and the bombing of Iran make this clear. The divisions within the American ruling class center on tactical issues related to a shared project of global domination.

Second, Trump’s maneuver takes place within the framework of an escalating global war and intensifying conflicts between the United States and the European imperialist powers. The costs of this conflict will be imposed through a massive assault on the working class.

Across Europe, governments are carrying out a vast program of remilitarization that can only be financed by dismantling what remains of social protections and diverting trillions into a military build-up. In the United States, Trump is spearheading a social counterrevolution and dictatorship against the working class, tearing down every constraint on the accumulation of wealth by the rich. One element of his calculations is undoubtedly the need to redirect military resources toward the “near abroad” in Latin America and against workers within the United States itself.

Third, Putin’s fawning praise for Trump at the summit on Friday underscores the thoroughly reactionary character of the Russian government. Putin’s ludicrous flattery recalls Stalin’s infamous toast to Hitler in August 1939, as the Stalin-Hitler Non-Aggression Pact was being concluded: “I know how much the German nation loves its Führer. I should therefore like to drink to his health.” Within a week, World War II had erupted; two years later, Hitler launched his invasion of the Soviet Union, at the cost of 27 million Soviet lives.

Like Stalin, Putin seeks deals with imperialism that can only end in disaster for the working class. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was provoked by the US and European imperialist powers, through the relentless expansion of NATO to the east and the refusal to negotiate over Ukraine. The invasion, however, was the action of a bourgeois state defending its own interests. It had nothing in common with the independent mobilization of the Russian or Ukrainian working class against imperialism.

The reactionary character of Putin’s rule is underscored by his alignment with far-right forces across Europe and the United States—including Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, and Alternative for Germany. They will be strengthened by the realignment now underway.

The outcome of today’s talks in Washington remains uncertain, but what is beyond doubt is that the fundamental tendencies driving the world toward catastrophe remain. There will be no progressive resolution to this crisis without the independent intervention of the international working class.

The Trotskyist movement completely rejects the opportunist mantra that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Neither the maneuvers of Trump, nor the intrigues of the European powers, nor the reactionary calculations of Putin offer a way forward. The struggle against genocide, austerity, dictatorship and war requires the building of a conscious, international socialist movement of the working class, fighting irreconcilably against all the capitalist governments and their political agents.

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The Chemmani Mass Graves expose the class war policies of the Sri Lankan State

Democratic Rights, english, Events, lead article, News, politics, politics & economics, War / August 15, 2025

By Sanjaya Jayasekera.

At the close of the 28th day of the second phase of excavations at the newly uncovered Chemmani–Ariyalai “Siththupaththi” Hindu Cemetery mass grave in Jaffna, 147 skeletons have been exhumed—among them toddlers, children, and babies less than twelve months old. The remains were unearthed in a pit as shallow as two feet, scattered without order—some bodies stacked atop one another, some with bent limbs suggesting they were buried alive. All were stripped of clothing, with clear signs of on-the-spot killings of women alongside their babies, hurried burials, and accompanied by chilling artifacts: a school bag identical to those donated by UNESCO in the 1990s, a baby’s toy and a feeding bottle, small glass bangles, socks, slippers, a suspected machine gun barrel, and fractured skulls. These discoveries, together with already available reports and evidence, leave no doubt that these were not the victims of natural disaster or random violence, but of a systematic, state-organised campaign of mass murder.

The ongoing excavation, conducted under the supervision of Jaffna Magistrate A.A. Anandarajah and led by archaeologist Professor Raj Somadeva, was temporarily halted on August 6 and is scheduled to resume on August 22. On August 3 and 4, this writer visited the site and spoke directly with the Magistrate; J. Thathparan, Executive Director of the Office of Missing Persons (OMP); and Professor Somadeva. All confirmed the significance of the discovery—not only for the scale of barbarism and human tragedy it reveals, but also for the irrefutable evidence it provides of crimes committed against innocent civilians.

Chemmani visit — From left at the Chemmani grave site, August 3, 2025: Jaffna Magistrate A.A. Anandarajah; J. Thathparan, Executive Director of the Office of Missing Persons (OMP); and the writer. Photo credit Kumanan Kana facebook page.

Chemmani from 1998 to today: Linking State Military to the Graves

One does not have to grope around to relate these mass graves to the Sri Lankan armed forces who occupied Jaffna after 1995. It is an indisputable fact—even acknowledged by ultra-right Sinhala racists—that mass graves exist and massacres were carried out by the state military. Alarmed by the Chemmani exhumations, racist warmonger Udaya Gammanpila, leader of the Pivithuru Hela Urumaya and a former minister, told the media: “The North is war-ravaged, so mass graves will appear anywhere. Digging them up and commenting [on them] is pointless and a waste of money.”

Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) reported in December 1997: “The fate of about 600 people who disappeared from Jaffna Peninsula in recent times is unknown”. The name “Chemmani” entered the world’s attention in July 1998, when Sri Lanka Army Corporal Dewage Somaratna Rajapaksha, convicted for the rape and murder of 18-year-old Tamil schoolgirl Krishanthi Kumaraswamy, told the Colombo High Court: “We didn’t kill anyone. We only buried bodies. We can show you where 300 to 400 bodies have been buried.”

In Jaffna Magistrate Court, just prior to exhumations in June 1999, he said, “I can show you how people were arrested in Ariyalai, tortured and buried…I can show you 10 places in Chemmani where bodies are buried. The other four convicted with me can show another six places.”

Rajapaksha’s testimony exposed a network of clandestine mass graves in the Jaffna area, containing hundreds of civilians who had “disappeared” following the Sri Lankan military’s recapture of the peninsula in 1995. In the late 1990s, limited excavations at Chemmani confirmed the remains of 15 individuals, but political obstruction, witness intimidation, procedural impediments, and the deliberate tampering with evidence ensured that most sites remained untouched for over two decades—like many other mass graves scattered across the country.

The present Ariyalai mass grave—only a short distance from the original Chemmani site—confirms the truth of Rajapaksha’s claims and directly links the Sri Lankan army to these atrocities. Media reports from the period documented hundreds of Tamil civilians vanishing after being stopped at military checkpoints and round-ups. The close proximity of the central army camp at Chemmani at the time, few yards away from the burial site, random placement of the skeletons, absence of clothing, a military item found with the bodies, and evidence of blunt force trauma all fit the established pattern of military abductions, torture, and summary executions.

Chemmani the dead — The fractured skull of a victim found on August 6, 2025 at the Chemmani mass grave. Photo credit: Shabeer Mohamed.

State repression: from the North to the South

The AHRC documented the systematic nature of disappearances, noting in December 1997 that more than 16,700 cases had been verified in the South during the 1988–90 counterinsurgency against the fascist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). Only in isolated instances were prosecutions initiated against the perpetrators, and almost all of these resulted in no convictions. In both the South and the North, the Sri Lankan ruling elite deployed the full apparatus of the state—the military and police, death squads, the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and emergency regulations that served as a legal licence to kill and dispose of bodies with impunity, along with the use of mass graves—to eliminate perceived threats to capitalist rule from the political right and, above all, against the innocent rural poor and the oppressed.

There were, however, differences in the methods of disposal. In the South, tyre pyres—burning corpses in public—were used to terrorise the population and demonstrate the cost of defiance. In the North and East, the army often concealed its crimes, burying the bodies in remote or controlled areas to evade scrutiny while continuing the repression.

These were not “excesses” or “aberrations,” but the outcome of deliberate class policy. The AHRC identified seven patterns behind disappearances, including direct political decisions to eliminate thousands as a precondition for introducing free-market economic policies, and the use of 1965 Indonesian-style mass killings as a model for repression.

Successive governments, shared crimes

The Chemmani mass graves, like nearly two dozen others uncovered around the island, indict not only the military but every government—UNP, SLFP, SLPP, and now NPP/JVP—that has presided over a regime of impunity for state violence.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), which today attempts to posture as a “clean” and democratic force, played a key role in the nationalist, chauvinist, and militarist campaigns that legitimised repression in both the North and the South—at least since July 1987, when the reactionary Indo–Sri Lanka Accord was signed. The JVP did so while entering into coalition governments with former presidents Chandrika Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapaksa. The JVP’s hands are soaked in the blood of Tamils. Its current silence on Chemmani speaks volumes about its real class allegiance—to the capitalist state and imperialism, which it defends against the working class and the poor.

Militarization, Intimidation, and Suppression

In the South, it was only after 1994—when President Kumaratunga came to power with phony pledges of truth and justice to the families of the disappeared—that limited space was opened for victims of state terror under the UNP government and of JVP fascists to lodge even police complaints. Soon, the military was elevated to the highest esteem by the People’s Alliance (PA) government in resuming the war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The continued militarization and repression in the North did not spare the South, where abductions were commonplace under president Rajapaksa’s reinvigorated war, keeping the working class and all dissenters in a state of terror. All throughout, the JVP waged a sinister chauvinist campaign supporting the war. Today, retired military officers have largely found a safe haven under the JVP/NPP government. These were the conditions that prevented the aggrieved relatives of the disappeared from pursuing judicial processes, while the police and military actively intervened to block prosecutions.

Nationalist traps and the dead-end of appeals to imperialism

Neither Tamil nationalist organisations operating in the North or Colombo, nor the Tamil diaspora—whose real aim is to secure an elite self-rule in the North and East to safeguard their privileges against the Tamil working class and poor—offer any way forward. Their appeals to the United Nations, Western governments, and international human rights bodies have only been pretexts, largely for US imperialism to exert pressure on Colombo into submission. These are the very same imperialist powers that provided military, intelligence, and diplomatic backing to Colombo during the war.

Similarly, Sinhala nationalism justifies past and present massacres under the cover of “protecting the unitary state” and defending “national security.” Both ethnic nationalisms serve to divide the working class, the only social force capable of ending the cycle of repression and impunity.

Massacres as class war

Like the massacres in the South during 1988–90, those in the North and East during the 1983–2009 anti-Tamil civil war were not simply crimes committed against an ethnic minority, but primarily acts of class war. The victims—whether rural Sinhala youth accused of JVP links, or Tamil villagers suspected of aiding the LTTE—were overwhelmingly drawn from the working class, unemployed youth and oppressed rural poor. Their elimination was intended to crush political opposition and terrorise the masses into accepting the “open economy” policies demanded by the local bourgeoisie and international finance capital.

As the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) has emphatically explained, there has been—and will be—no justice for the victims of the South without justice for the victims of the North, and vice versa. The capitalist state, founded in 1948 on communal division, cannot and will not prosecute itself.

The way forward: a socialist programme for the working class and the Oppressed

The ICFI advances a clear perspective for ending repression and securing genuine justice: the independent political mobilisation of the working class, uniting Sinhala, Tamil, and Muslim workers in the struggle for a Sri Lanka–Eelam United Socialist States, as part of the Union of Socialist Republics of South Asia.

This requires building a revolutionary party grounded in the Trotskyist programme of permanent revolution, fighting to unite the oppressed rural and urban poor, along with unemployed youth, behind the leadership of the working class. The middle class and petty bourgeoisie must break from nationalist illusions and join forces with their true class brothers and sisters, both nationally and internationally.

The truth is that justice will not come from The Hague, Geneva, or Washington, but from the victory of the working class over the capitalist system that breeds war, dictatorship, and mass murder. The graves at Chemmani are not merely relics of past atrocities—they are a warning of what the Sri Lankan state will resort to again if the working class suffers another defeat. This is not a distant possibility but a living reality, demonstrated before our eyes in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinians by imperialist-backed Zionist Israel.

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Workers must mobilise to halt the Zionist/imperialist extermination of the Palestinians in Gaza

Democratic Rights, english, lead article, News, politics, War, World War / August 8, 2025

By Jordan Shilton

Reposted below is the WSWS.org Perspective published here on August 08, 2025.

The decision by the security cabinet of Israel’s fascistic government to expand its military occupation of the Gaza Strip will mean death for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and presages their final ethnic cleansing. Workers and young people who want to stop this barbarism must construct a socialist movement in the working class against the Zionist regime and its imperialist patrons.

The phased plan proposes the military conquest of the Gaza Strip, including Gaza City, Khan Younis and other refugee camps, where at least a million displaced Palestinians are located. Responding to tactical concerns expressed by the Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir of an unnecessary loss of military personnel and endangering the 20 hostages still held by Hamas, open talk of permanent annexation has given way to a proposal to hold the captured areas for five months with a new security perimeter set up inside the enclave, while Hamas is eliminated and the remaining hostages are freed. This is to be followed supposedly by some unspecified form of Arab control.

Behind this rhetorical shift, mass murder and ethnic cleansing are still on the order of the day. The IDF has already issued new enforced displacement orders in parts of Gaza City in the north and Khan Younis in the south. A military spokesman said ground troops were preparing to “expand the scope of combat operations.”

One million people, around half of the enclave’s population, will initially be driven south toward the Mawasi “humanitarian zone”—a concentration camp—after which a military offensive will be launched in the ethnically cleansed area. Many of these people, who are already starving and have been displaced multiple times since the genocide began, will die en route.

This is a genocide carried out by the Zionist regime but made in Washington, Berlin and London.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to escalate the extermination and expulsion of the Palestinians is made possible by the unconditional support his government enjoys from the imperialist powers that have flooded weapons and other war materiel to the Zionist regime. Indeed, President Trump greenlighted Netanyahu’s plan when he declared on August 5, “So Israel is going to have to make a decision. … It’s going to be pretty much up to Israel.”

Since the outset of Israel’s latest onslaught on Gaza in October 2023, the imperialist governments have combined their arming of Israel with efforts to crush popular opposition to the genocide at home by deploying police violence and smear campaigns branding anti-genocide activists as “antisemites.”

But the decades-long support for the Zionist regime by the imperialist powers goes back to the creation in 1948 of a Jewish-exclusivist state in the British mandate of Palestine. As the Fourth International explained in May 1948, the partition of Palestine into a Jewish state and Arab territories “is a compromise between the imperialist robbers” in the US and Britain aimed at securing their positions in the region. Partition would “throttle the anti-imperialist fight of the masses, while Zionists and Arab feudalists will vie for imperialist favours,” the Fourth International warned.

Nearly eight decades on, the imperialists can only preserve Israel as a bridgehead for their domination over the Middle East by backing the annihilation of the Palestinians.

The determination on the part of Washington and its European accomplices to facilitate the genocide and crack down on any opposition flows from their desperate striving to advance their predatory economic and geopolitical interests amid a global capitalist breakdown. The same antagonisms between the major powers that led to two world wars in the last century have created the conditions for a third imperialist world war, which threatens the very survival of humanity.

The initial stages of this conflict are well underway, with the genocide of the Palestinians serving as a component of US imperialism’s push to secure unchallenged hegemony over the oil-rich Middle East. At the same time, the imperialist gangsters are waging a war against Russia with the aim of reducing it to a semi-colonial status and preparing a war on China to block its economic rise. The imperialists’ readiness to sanction the slaughter of an entire people provides an indication of the barbarism of which they are capable in pursuit of raw materials, markets, pools of labour and geostrategic influence.

The despotic Arab regimes continue to vie for imperialist favours and are deeply complicit in mass murder. For the Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi and other Gulf ruling elites, their main concern is to serve as junior partners in Washington’s war of regional conquest and plunder, forming an anti-Iranian alliance, without provoking an upsurge of the oppressed Arab working class against their rule. Thus their refusal to offer any opposition to the genocide beyond hypocritical statements of concern and proposals to orchestrate the expulsion of the Palestinians, i.e., carry out a crime against humanity more “humanely.” On the very day that Netanyahu discussed the expansion of military operations in Gaza with his security cabinet, Egypt inked a joint deal with the Zionist regime for the export of natural gas worth an estimated $35 billion.

The Zionists and their imperialist paymasters have succeeded for nearly two years in carrying through their criminal “final solution” of the Palestinian question thanks above all to the despicable conduct of the social democratic parties, trade unions and their political hangers-on. Parties like Labour in Britain and Germany’s Social Democrats that are in government have supplied Netanyahu’s fascist regime with weapons and military equipment and outlawed popular opposition. The trade unions in all of the major imperialist centres have systematically suppressed opposition in the working class to the genocide, ignoring the appeal of Palestinian trade unions at its outset for global solidarity actions to halt Israel’s onslaught.

Millions of workers and young people have taken to the streets around the world to express their outrage over the genocide. However, the social democratic and Stalinist parties, as well as the pseudo-left organisations and campaign groups in their orbit, have shackled protesters to the bankrupt strategy of moral appeals meant to pressure the very imperialist war criminals responsible for butchering the Palestinians.

The urgent task facing the working class in the imperialist centres is to mobilise its immense social power to halt the Gaza genocide and the war machine responsible for its implementation. Workers throughout manufacturing, transportation, and other key sectors must organise themselves in defiance of the union bureaucracy to fight for the following demands:

An immediate halt to shipment of all weapons to Israel.
The boycott of all trade and other economic activity with Israel.
US, European and other corporations assisting Israel in carrying out the genocide must be indicted and prosecuted.
The arrest of Israeli officials for war crimes.
The end of repression of the opposition to the Gaza genocide.
The immediate and unhindered access to Gaza for the supply of aid via all available land crossings.

These demands can only be enforced through the initiation of an industrial and political struggle by the working class. This week’s strike at Boeing, at the very heart of the US war machine, underscores the real basis for the development of a mass movement against imperialist war and the horrendous crimes it produces.

Strikes and a refusal to produce and handle goods destined for Israel must be combined with sustained efforts to broaden the struggle to other sections of workers and young people. Resolutions should be adopted by workers and delegations sent to other workplaces aimed at mobilising the working class all over the world to stop imperialist barbarism by taking up the fight for socialism.

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Mobilize the working class to stop the Gaza genocide!

Democratic Rights, english, Living Conditions, News, politics, politics & economics, War, World War / July 24, 2025

By WSWS Editorial Board.

Reposted below is the WSWS Editorial Board Statement published on wsws.org here on July 24, 2025.

Every day brings new reports of the genocidal violence the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) are unleashing on the defenseless Palestinian population. With food distribution to Gaza reduced to a trickle, dozens of Palestinians are dying of hunger each day, and more than 1,000 have been shot by IDF forces while trying to reach aid distribution points.

In Deir al-Balah, raided by Israel on Sunday, Palestinians returning to their homes are met with scenes of devastation—“complete destruction,” as one resident described it in comments to CNN. “There is nothing that indicates a source of life.”

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that the people of Gaza are confronting “mass starvation … a large proportion of the population of Gaza is starving.”

While the Israeli government is carrying out these atrocities, the United States and the major European imperialist powers are directly complicit. For nearly two years, they have armed and financed Israel as it wages genocide in Gaza, criminalized domestic opposition to the slaughter, and politically justified this historic crime—one that ranks alongside the atrocities committed by the Nazis during World War II.

A coalition of European powers and other close allies of US imperialism issued a cynical statement Monday trying to wash themselves of responsibility.

In the statement, Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, along with a number of smaller powers now acknowledge Israel’s undeniable resort to mass murder. Yet they remain steadfast in their support for the Zionist regime. Refusing to call the Gaza war a genocide, they offer only vague euphemisms while fully endorsing the policies of Washington, which alongside Berlin, is the main provider of arms to Israel.

They state, “The Israeli government’s aid delivery model is dangerous, fuels instability and deprives Gazans of human dignity. We condemn the drip feeding of aid and the inhumane killing of civilians, including children, seeking to meet their most basic needs of water and food. It is horrifying that over 800 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid.” Calling for a “permanent ceasefire,” they conclude, “We reaffirm our complete support to the efforts of the US … to achieve this.”

But Washington is not seeking peace, any more than Israel is focused on delivering aid to Gaza. For nearly two years, the United States has shipped bombs, artillery, drones and other weapons used by Israel to target hospitals, refugee camps, medics and starving women and children. From the outset, top Israeli officials openly declared their genocidal aims, referring to Palestinians as “human animals” and invoking the Biblical command to exterminate the “seed of Amalek.”

Six months ago, Trump pledged that Washington would “take over” Gaza, expel the Palestinians, “level it out” and turn it into a beach resort, the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Now, Israeli officials are moving to implement this plan, which has underpinned their policy from the beginning. On Tuesday, in the Knesset, fascist Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called on Israel to “conquer and settle Gaza,” declaring, “We have strong support from President Trump to turn Gaza into a prosperous region, a coastal city with settlement and employment.”

The statement from the European imperialist powers refrains from labeling the Israeli war a genocide and ethnic cleansing, but they are well aware that this is what is taking place. Indeed, their statement declares: “Proposals to remove the Palestinian population into a ‘humanitarian city’ are completely unacceptable. Permanent forced displacement is a violation of international humanitarian law.” Nonetheless, they cynically embrace US policy under the banner of peace.

The imperialist powers support Israel’s genocide because it is in line with their geopolitical interests. If Israel’s actions conflicted with those interests, they would be halted immediately. As German Chancellor Friedrich Merz bluntly admitted, “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us.” Backed and armed by the United States, Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Canada and Australia, the Zionist regime functions as a proxy for imperialist domination of the oil-rich Middle East.

Mass and growing opposition to Israel’s crimes exist throughout the world. What is lacking is a clear program and perspective. The International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties insist that the genocide will not be stopped through appeals to the very capitalist governments carrying out and enabling the genocide. What is urgently required, and what has not yet occurred, is the independent eruption of the working class onto the political stage.

We propose that workers and young people throughout the world raise definite demands, including:

An immediate halt of shipment of all weapons to Israel. Since the beginning of the genocide, it is estimated that Israel has received some $25 billion in weapons and other assistance. The vast majority of bombs dropped on Palestinian homes has been provided by the United States and the European imperialist powers.

The boycott of all trade and other economic activity with Israel. The ability of the Israeli state to carry out the genocide must be halted by crippling its economic foundations. A recent comment in the Financial Times noted that since October 2023, Israel’s stock market has been the “best-performing in the world,” with an influx of foreign capital fueling the wealth of the ruling elite and financing the Zionist regime’s ability to murder Palestinians.

US, European and other corporations assisting Israel in carrying out the genocide must be indicted and prosecuted. The ruling class internationally is arming Israel behind the backs of the population and reaping vast profits by providing the IDF weapons, AI and surveillance infrastructure, just as corporations like IG Farben profited from making Zyklon B gas for the gas chambers the Nazis used to kill Jews. Washington retaliated against UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese’s denunciation of this “economy of genocide” by revoking her visa and freezing her bank accounts.

The arrest of Israeli officials for war crimes. International arrest warrants have already been drawn up against many Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but are ignored by the imperialist powers. Moreover, serving in the IDF are many citizens of the US and European countries. They should be subject to arrest and prosecution if it is determined that they in any way contributed to the genocide.

The end of repression of the opposition to the Gaza genocide. Capitalist governments, including those that signed this week’s statement, have relentlessly criminalized opposition to the genocide. They have carried out mass arrests against organizations criticizing it, launched bloody police assaults on pro-Gaza protests, and prosecuted defenders of Gaza on bogus terrorism or antisemitism charges. Workers and youth must fight to defend those who come out in defense of Gaza, for charges against them to be dropped and to end the repression of their activities.

These demands will not be achieved through appeals to the governments and institutions responsible for the genocide. It requires the intervention of the international working class through strikes, walkouts and other forms of independent action. This means organizing outside the stranglehold of the trade union apparatus, which in every country has done nothing to stop the slaughter in Gaza.

The struggle must unify workers across all borders—Palestinian, Israeli, American, European and beyond—in a common fight against imperialist war, genocide and the capitalist system that produces them. This includes Israeli workers, who must reject the Zionist regime and its crimes. There are significant layers of the Israeli population who are horrified by the actions of their government. In earlier decades, the Israeli state honored non-Jews who resisted the Nazis as “righteous among the nations.” Today, Israelis who recognize the criminal character of the genocide must speak out and take action.

The fight against the genocide in Gaza is inseparable from the fight against the expanding global imperialist war, of which it is a component part. The aim of the imperialist powers to create a “new Middle East” under their domination is inseparable from their broader war plans against Russia and China.

The World Socialist Web Site, the International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties call for an end to the Gaza genocide through the building of a new international anti-war movement. This movement must be grounded in the working class and based on a revolutionary socialist program. Its goal must be to abolish the capitalist profit system, which is the root cause of war.

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Zelensky government hails Trump’s resumption of weapons deliveries

english, Fascism, lead article, News, politics, politics & economics, War, World War / July 11, 2025

By Jason Melanovski.

Reposted below is the article published on wsws.org here on July 11, 2025.

In a complete about-face from the position his administration declared last week, United States President Donald Trump announced on Monday that his government would continue to send weapons to Kiev in order to fuel the ongoing proxy war against Russia that has killed hundreds of thousands in its over three-year history.

“We’re gonna send some more weapons we have to them, they have to be able to defend themselves, they’re getting hit very hard now,” Trump told reporters during a meeting of US and Israeli officials at the White House.

Later that day, the Pentagon released its own statement confirming more war materiel would be sent to Ukraine, likewise contradicting its previous statements that aid had been paused.

“At President Trump’s direction, the Department of Defense is sending additional defensive weapons to Ukraine to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops,” it stated.

While initial reports from Politico cited Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby as the Trump official responsible for the weapons halt last week, shortly thereafter NBC News named Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the individual who made the decision, as part of a “capability review,” to unilaterally halt shipments to Ukraine starting on July 2.

According to the Washington Post, included in the items being held back from Ukraine were over two dozen Patriot air defense missiles, over two dozen Stinger air defense systems, precision artillery rounds, Hellfire missiles, drones and more than 90 AIM air-to-air missiles that Ukraine launches from F-16 fighter jets. These were reportedly already in Poland and being prepped for delivery to Ukraine when the order to cease was declared.

The move, which was roundly criticized by the Ukrainian government, was later confirmed by both the Pentagon and White House, with Trump’s press secretary stating that the decision “was made to put America’s interests first following a (U.S. Defense Department) review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe.”

As has become typical of his crisis-plagued, criminal presidency, Trump later performed an about-face while speaking to a NY Times reporter last Friday.

“Why did you pause weapons shipments to Ukraine?” the journalist asked Trump as he was boarding Air Force One.

“We haven’t,” Trump replied, flatly contradicting multiple previous statements from his own government. “We’re giving weapons.”

Trump’s 180-degree foreign policy turn is being publicly celebrated by the right-wing dictatorial government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, following a disastrous public meeting at the White House between the two presidents, who was just months ago was accusing Trump of living in a Russian “disinformation space.”

On Tuesday, Andriy Yermak, Zelensky’s closest presidential advisor, vociferously hailed Trump as the “only leader” who can pressure Russia to end the war on Ukrainian terms in an interview with the NY Post.

“I always knew that the two presidents share a lot in common. They have many of the things that they see the same way—they just need to talk more,” he said. “There was a brilliant meeting in the Vatican, and then several phone calls, and then meeting in The Hague, and so all that is the work to understand each other more deeply.

“And you know, certain events had to unfold, certain conversations had to happen—including conversations with (Russian President Vladimir) Putin.”

Yermak’s glowing description of Trump is a tacit admission that both the war and the Zelensky government itself are highly dependent on the continuation of US military and financial aid.

Despite having been allocated $182.8 billion in US support since the beginning of the full-scale war in February 2022, the Ukrainian government continues to be totally dependent on foreign aid to function.

Speaking Wednesday at the 2025 Ukraine Recovery Conference, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal underlined the critical financial situation of the country.

“The total financial resource for defence and security in 2025 will amount to nearly US$50 billion. That is 26% of GDP,” the prime minister stated.

The weapons procurement budget is also at a record-high $16.4 billion, while the state’s own revenue is projected to be just $48.5 billion.

“Thus, external financing is critically important for us, as it allows Ukraine to allocate its own resources directed at defending our country,” Shmyhal said.

Shmyhal also noted that Ukraine has already secured $22 billion in foreign aid for 2025. But it needs more for next year.

“Meanwhile, 2026 remains a challenge. Our external financing needs will stay above $40 billion. The key task is to develop mechanisms and instruments that will make it possible to raise these funds.”

Whatever the full story behind the rapid vacillations of Trump’s policy towards Ukraine, the ultimate goal of the Trump administration is to uphold the predatory interests of US capitalism, as demonstrated by the “critical minerals” signed between Ukraine and the US in April.

As Trump has demonstrated, despite his campaign promises to end the war in Ukraine in “24 hours,” he is just as committed to war as his predecessors, as long as it maximizes the interests of US capitalism.

Zelensky government hails Trump’s resumption of weapons deliveries Read More »

House passes Trump bill, which robs working people to give tax cuts for the super-rich

Democratic Rights, economics, english, Inequality, lead article, News, politics, politics & economics, World Economy / July 5, 2025

By Patrick Martin.

Reposted below is the article published on wsws.org here on July 04, 2025.

The House of Representatives gave final approval to President Trump’s tax and spending bill Thursday, with a 218-214 vote that fell nearly along party lines. Republicans backed the legislation by 218-2 and all 212 Democrats opposed it.

The bill cuts taxes for the wealthy by $3 trillion, slashes more than $1 trillion from social spending on Medicaid and food stamps and pours $300 billion more into military violence abroad and domestic repression, particularly against immigrants.

Trump plans to sign the legislation Friday morning in a fascist-style ceremony drenched in Fourth of July hoopla, topped off with a flyover by B-2 bombers, the same warplanes that he ordered to attack Iran barely 10 days ago.

The bill was unchanged from the version passed by the Senate two days before, despite the clamor from the fascistic House Freedom Caucus that it did not sufficiently cut the federal deficit, while more than a dozen Republican “moderates” deplored the cuts, particularly in Medicaid, as too large.

In the end, however, nearly every Republican fell in line with the dictates of the White House, with Trump threatening to purge anyone who voted against his principal legislative initiative by supporting primary challengers against them. Underlying the political bullying was the deluge of online threats against anyone who might oppose the bill, including threats of violence.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, addressing the House just before the vote, delivered an anti-communist tirade in which he declared that the United States was the first country to be founded on religious principles, pointing to the slogan “In God We Trust” embossed on the wall of the chamber (put up not by the Founding Fathers but by the McCarthyite witch-hunters of the 1950s and early 1960s).

As the WSWS explained when the bill passed the Senate:

The bill is one of the largest transfers of wealth from workers and the poor to the oligarchy in US history. It calls for $930 billion in cuts to the Medicaid program, which, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will deprive 11.8 million low-income and disabled workers of medical care.

It also includes $285 billion in food stamp cuts, a 20 percent reduction in a program on which 40 million Americans rely to feed themselves and their families. Nearly 11 million people, including 4 million children, could lose food assistance.

While the Democratic Party claimed to oppose the bill and every Democrat in the House and Senate voted against it, there was no serious effort by the party leadership to mobilize popular opposition.

The Democrats did not call a single protest in Washington or in any way alert the American population to the onslaught against their living standards and right to access healthcare services that this legislation authorizes. Instead, they engaged in a handful of futile gestures on Capitol Hill.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries delivered an eight-hour and 32-minute “speech” opposing the Trump bill, breaking the previous record for such a performance, but this only delayed passage in the House until Thursday afternoon. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer did even less, making a parliamentary point of order that led to a change in the name of the bill, which the Republicans wished to call the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” in tribute to Trump’s sloganeering.

The real attitude of these gentlemen to the fascist in the White House was demonstrated in the weeks leading up to the passage of the tax and spending bill.

In the Senate, Schumer intervened to break a parliamentary deadlock over a so-called Continuing Resolution, legislation required to provide funds to keep the government running. He led a group of Democrats to give the Republicans a 60-vote majority needed for passage.

In the House, Jeffries mobilized a majority of the Democratic caucus to vote against a resolution to impeach Trump for ordering air strikes on Iran without seeking congressional authorization, let alone the constitutionally required declaration of war.

If the congressional arithmetic were reversed, with Democrats holding a narrow majority in each house over the Republicans, the Democrats would not even have attempted to push through their supposed priorities over Republican opposition.

It should be recalled, for example, that the Biden administration was unable to enact either an increase in the federal minimum wage, significant debt forgiveness for college student loans, or measures to curb police violence after the nationwide protests against the police murder of George Floyd, because one or two right-wing Democratic senators blocked the legislation.

The spinelessness of the Democratic Party cannot by itself explain the passage of this monstrous legislation. The Democrats were responding to their real constituencies, Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus, and not to the working people whom they claim to defend.

The corporate oligarchs wanted the Trump tax cuts, enacted in 2017 and set to expire at the end of this year, made permanent. The legislation guarantees the 21 percent corporate tax rate and includes a treasure chest of other pro-corporate provisions that allow giant companies and billionaires to pay taxes at lower rates than factory workers and school teachers.

There is considerable discontent on Wall Street that the tax cuts will be financed largely through borrowing, since the spending cuts are to be phased in over a 10-year period and in any case do not come close to the $4 trillion windfall for the wealthy. But it is well understood that the cuts in Medicaid and food stamps are only a down payment, and that even more savage cuts are being prepared in future years, targeting Social Security and Medicare, the two largest social spending programs.

As to the military-police aspects of the legislation, roughly equal sums of about $150 billion each are provided for the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security. The DHS funds will go to finish building the wall on the US-Mexico border begun during Trump’s first term, and to build a network of concentration camps to detain the millions of immigrants Trump and his fascist aides Stephen Miller and Tom Homan plan to round up and expel.

The Pentagon funds will be used at least in part to begin work on Trump’s proposed anti-missile program. This is not a “defensive” measure but a direct preparation for nuclear war, since it would encourage a US nuclear attack on a foreign antagonist, such as Russia or China, in the illusion that the US would survive a retaliatory strike.

The Democrats have said virtually nothing about either measure, because they support the massive build-up of both the US military machine and the apparatus of domestic repression directed against immigrants and the working class as a whole. They have criticized Trump only for his most overtly fascistic methods of attacking immigrants, and for his shifting the focus of US foreign policy away from the war against Russia in Ukraine and towards the Middle East and China.

There are a raft of anti-democratic measures incorporated into the 950-page bill, which the WSWS will analyze in the coming days. One provision stands out immediately: The bill authorizes the Trump administration to terminate all federal funding for healthcare services through Planned Parenthood clinics. That is a longstanding demand of the fascist right, which seeks to bankrupt Planned Parenthood, the largest provider of abortion services, by cutting off funding for its non-abortion healthcare operations as well.

House passes Trump bill, which robs working people to give tax cuts for the super-rich Read More »

American imperialism’s bombardment of Iran: A day that will live in infamy

english, Fascism, lead article, News, politics, politics & economics, Trade War, War, World War / June 24, 2025

By WSWS Editorial Board

We repost below the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board statement published on wsws.org here on June 23, 2025

June 22, 2025 is a day that will live in infamy. In a massive and unprovoked assault, the United States launched a sneak attack on Iran, dropping the most powerful non-nuclear bunker-buster bombs ever used in combat on Iranian nuclear energy facilities. This act of aggression is the continuation and escalation of the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza, and threatens to engulf the entire Middle East and set the world on fire.

Codenamed “Operation Midnight Hammer,” the assault involved more than 125 aircraft, including at least eight B-2 Spirit stealth bombers, backed by fighter jets, refueling tankers and surveillance aircraft, in what was the largest B-2 strike operation in US history.

The centerpiece of the attack was the deployment of the GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP), a 13.6-ton bunker-busting bomb—the most powerful non-nuclear weapon of its kind ever used. Twelve MOPs were dropped on the heavily fortified Fordow uranium enrichment site, and two more on Natanz. These were accompanied by numerous 2,900-pound Tomahawk missiles, which rained down on both facilities as well as the Isfahan research complex.

US President Donald Trump justified his attack in a four-minute homicidal, lying rant, delivered Saturday night. Announcing that US forces had struck three nuclear facilities, he claimed they were part of a “horribly destructive enterprise” which was supposedly necessary to “stop the nuclear threat” posed by Iran.

In fact, these sites are part of Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program, developed in accordance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and subject to international inspection. For years, the United States’ own intelligence agencies have assessed that Iran was not actively pursuing nuclear weapons. But in the tradition of the Bush administration’s lies about Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction,” Trump once again invoked fabricated threats to justify extraordinarily reckless acts of unprovoked aggression.

Trump boasted of the “spectacular military success” of the attack, which he intended to serve as a message to the entire region, declaring that “Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace.”

The reference to Iran as the “bully of the Middle East” turns reality on its head. For over a third of a century, US imperialism has been at war and carried out regime change operations throughout the region, including in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Over the past two years, the Israeli government has waged a genocidal war in Gaza with continuous US support, slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians. This has been merely a dress rehearsal for a broader campaign of mass murder.

Having just launched an unprovoked military strike against a sovereign nation in flagrant violation of international law, Trump now demands “peace”! By this, he means “unconditional surrender,” as he demanded last week—that is, the turning over of the country to direct imperialist dominance. On Sunday, Trump explicitly called for “regime change” in Iran, following his threat last week to assassinate Ayatollah Khamenei.

Trump declared, “For 40 years”—since the overthrow of the US-backed Shah—“Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America, death to Israel,’” and proclaimed that “hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East … have died as a direct result of their hate.” The carnage Trump blames on Iran is in fact the outcome of successive US wars and interventions, under Democrats and Republicans, that have devastated entire societies. It is not Iran that has inflicted “hundreds of thousands” of deaths—it is the United States.

The strikes were directly coordinated with the fascist Israeli government, which is continuing to launch missile attacks on Iran. As Trump stated, “We worked as a team as perhaps no team has worked before.” Just prior to Trump’s remarks, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement hailing the US airstrikes and thanking Trump, declaring that the two were pursuing a policy of “Peace through strength: First comes strength, then comes peace.” In other words, slaughter and terror must precede submission.

Trump concluded with a naked threat of further violence: “There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran. … Remember, there are many targets left.” The logical next step in this campaign of destruction is the use of tactical nuclear weapons—an option the Trump administration has repeatedly declared is “not off the table.”

Saturday’s attack makes clear that there are no red lines for American imperialism, which will stop at nothing. Its criminality knows no limits. No government has so openly and flagrantly violated international law since the Nazi regime.

The bombing of Iran is a central component of an escalating global war. It is not a question of warning of the danger of a new world war—it has already begun. American imperialism is seeking to resolve its deepening internal social and political crisis through military aggression. Having targeted Iran, the logic of imperialist war is leading inevitably to confrontation with China. Regime change in Iran is aimed at securing unchallenged control over the Persian Gulf, the Caspian Sea and the broader Eurasian landmass—regions rich in oil, gas and critical trade routes.

Trump hailed the strikes as a “spectacular military success,” but in reality, he has embarked on a catastrophic and utterly reckless course of action. Whatever short-term calculations were made by the White House and Pentagon, they have now launched a war whose consequences they cannot control. They have sown the wind and will reap the whirlwind. As with the war against Iraq launched in 2003, American imperialism has a rendezvous with disaster, but on a far larger scale.

It remains to be seen how Iran will respond, as well as its close allies, Russia and China. Iran’s parliament has moved to close the strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which a significant share of the world’s oil supply passes—an action that will send global energy markets into turmoil and could trigger a global recession. For years, the passivity of the Iranian bourgeois government—marked by appeals for negotiations and the avoidance of direct confrontation—has emboldened US imperialism.

Whatever the immediate response of Iran, Russia and China, however, the decisive issue is the reaction of the international working class. The most significant and far-reaching impact of Saturday’s attack will be on the consciousness of billions of people throughout the world. This act of imperialist aggression is already provoking mass outrage, expressed on all social media platforms and through initial protests that took place throughout the US on Sunday.

The war on Iran follows nearly two years of expanding global opposition to the genocide in Gaza. It exposes beyond any doubt the thoroughly criminal character of American foreign policy. The United States is increasingly seen by billions of workers throughout the world as a criminal government that operates outside of all legal restraint. The myth that American imperialism defends “freedom” or “democracy” lies forever in the past.

The war will pour gasoline on the already raging social and political crises in the United States, across Europe and around the world. It is the action of a regime ruled by and for the financial oligarchy. As it bombs and murders abroad, the Trump administration is dismantling democratic rights at home and erecting a political dictatorship. The Democratic Party, the so-called opposition, is paralyzed and complicit—paralyzed by its fear of the working class and complicit in the aims of imperialism.

Mass opposition is emerging. Just one week before the bombing of Iran, millions participated in the largest anti-government demonstrations in American history. The question is not whether opposition exists, but how it can be organized, directed and armed with a political perspective. The immense anger and revulsion provoked by the bombing must be transformed into a conscious political movement of the working class, linking the fight against war and dictatorship to the struggle against capitalism.

The working class is the social force that must be mobilized to stop imperialist barbarism. The criminal war being waged against Iran is not an aberration, but the product of the entire capitalist system. It must be halted through the unified global struggle of the working class, organized across all national boundaries.

The International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties call for an immediate end to the US-Israeli war against Iran and the dismantling of the entire imperialist war machine. We urge workers and youth to organize protests, walkouts and strikes in every country.

Imperialism is plunging the world into barbarism and criminality. It is not a matter of reforming a bankrupt system, but of overthrowing it through the conscious and organized struggle of the working class for power. The alternative to war and dictatorship is socialism. What is needed is the building of a new revolutionary leadership to lead this movement forward, and to make socialism—the democratic control of the economy by the working class in the interests of all humanity—the guiding principle of a new social order.

American imperialism’s bombardment of Iran: A day that will live in infamy Read More »

Stop the war against Iran!

english, lead article, News, politics, politics & economics, War, World War / June 21, 2025

By WSWS Editorial Board.

We repost below the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board statement published on wsws.org here on June 21, 2025

American imperialism and its Israeli proxy continue to escalate their illegal, unprovoked war of aggression against Iran, with US nuclear-capable B-52s and aircraft carrier battle groups readying to launch an imminent attack.

Nearly a quarter century after the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, the American ruling class is once more preparing to launch a criminal war, this time against a vast country with a population more than three times larger than Iraq.

Through war, the would-be dictator Donald Trump and the financial oligarchy that rules via the Republican and Democratic parties hope to:

Reimpose the shackles of neo-colonial subjugation on Iran, 45 years after the Iranian people toppled the monarchical dictatorship of the US-installed Shah.
Secure unbridled US imperialist control over the world’s principal oil-exporting region and key global ocean trade routes, so as to prepare for war with Washington’s principal strategic adversaries, China and Russia.
Stave off economic crisis and financial collapse through plunder.
Divert attention from a massive domestic crisis and mounting social opposition.

The consequences of this reckless gamble will be catastrophic for the Iranian people, the Middle East and the entire world.

For all its massively armed gangsterism, deceit and treachery, the outcome of this war will be no less—and probably more—disastrous than the “wars of choice” that US imperialism waged in Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and Korea.

The political establishments in the US and other imperialist centers, on the other hand, are in full war propaganda mode. Iran is vilified as a “terror state” and an “existential” threat to the Israeli and American people.

But who will take any of this seriously after decades of lies and criminality—after being bombarded with claims that Iraq possessed “weapons of mass destruction” and endless apologias for Israel as it bombs hospitals and slaughters people queuing for food in its drive to kill and expel the Gaza Palestinians?

Twenty-two years ago, at the launch of the Pentagon’s “shock and awe” invasion” of Iraq, World Socialist Web Site Chairman David North wrote, “Whatever the outcome of the initial stages of the conflict that has begun, American imperialism has a rendezvous with disaster. It cannot conquer the world. It cannot reimpose colonial shackles upon the masses of the Middle East.”

US imperialism is going to war not just against the 90 million people of Iran but against the entire world. On Friday, millions took to the streets of Iran and other countries in the Middle East to voice their opposition to the illegal US-Israeli assault.

Throughout the world, people understand that the Trump administration is preparing to launch a war of aggression in alliance with Israel, whose genocidal assault on Gaza has made it the most despised state in the world.

In the US, there is a growing mass movement against Trump, with 10-15 million people joining the June 14 “No Kings” protests. Moreover, a Washington Post poll found that the Americans it surveyed oppose US involvement in a war against Iran by a nearly two-to-one margin.

The working class, as the classical Marxists explained, must evaluate its attitude toward any war by examining the social interests involved.

The US-Israeli war on Iran is an imperialist war. It is being waged on a historically oppressed country. The dominant factor in its political history has been a century-long struggle for emancipation from first British and then American imperialism.

Moreover, the war is part of an interconnected chain of military operations spanning decades. The same governments, organizations and media outlets now backing Israel’s onslaught on Iran were the most strident in supporting the war against Russia, provoked by the imperialist powers and justified on the basis of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Over the past 35 years, US imperialism has sought to reverse the consequences of the wave of anti-colonial and social revolutions of the 20th century and to counter the erosion of its global hegemony through ever-expanding militarism and aggression.

The World Socialist Web Site, the International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties stand unequivocally for the defeat of US imperialism and its Israeli proxy.

Iran is a capitalist country, led by a reactionary bourgeois nationalist regime. Rising to power on the basis of the 1979 Revolution, its greatest fear is the working class. Faced with mounting US threats over the past two decades, the Iranian bourgeoisie has combined repeated efforts to reach an accommodation with Washington with a drive to eliminate what remains of the social concessions made in the immediate aftermath of the popular explosion that overthrew the Shah.

The International Committee of the Fourth International opposes the bourgeois government in Iran. But its attitude to the imminent war is determined by the fact that Iran, a historically oppressed country, is threatened with subjugation and annihilation by an alliance of imperialist powers. The Iranian resistance to the imperialist onslaught is entirely legitimate and politically progressive.

Those who argue that the reactionary character of the Iranian government negates the right of Iran to defend itself are giving “left” cover to the imperialist war drive.

As Leon Trotsky wrote in 1937, shortly after Japanese imperialism launched its war of conquest against China, when an oppressed country comes under imperialist attack, the duty of socialists is to defend it irrespective of the reactionary character of its government. Answering those who refused to defend China because it was then led by Chiang Kai-shek and the bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang, which strangled the 1925-27 anti-imperialist revolution and massacred tens of thousands of revolutionary-minded workers, Trotsky explained:

China is a semicolonial country which Japan is transforming, under our very eyes, into a colonial country. Japan’s struggle is imperialist and reactionary. China’s struggle is emancipatory and progressive. …

Japan and China are not on the same historical plane. The victory of Japan will signify the enslavement of China, the end of her economic and social development, and the terrible strengthening of Japanese imperialism. The victory of China will signify, on the contrary, the social revolution in Japan and the free development, that is to say unhindered by external oppression, of the class struggle in China.

The working class in Iran and globally must oppose the US-Israeli onslaught, but they must do so through their own class struggle methods. This means developing a global working class counteroffensive that ties the fight against imperialist war and the ever-widening assault on the social and democratic rights of the working class to the fight against capitalism. This requires the struggle for the building of sections of the ICFI in Iran, throughout the Middle East and internationally.

In conventional military terms, the US-Israeli attackers have a vast preponderance of destructive power. But as the history of revolutions and colonial wars has repeatedly shown, military might, although significant, is only one factor.

The principal vulnerability of imperialism lies in the massive and rapidly expanding potential for social opposition that exists in the Middle East, throughout Asia, Africa and in the growing resistance of workers in the imperialist centers.

It is this force that constitutes the decisive answer to imperialist aggression and the expanding global war and that must be mobilized. This can only be done in implacable opposition to all the rival bourgeoisies, their governments and political representatives.

In the US, all factions of the Democratic Party and its chief media voice, the New York Times, are supporting a war that has been organized by a president they themselves admit is systematically violating the Constitution and seeking to establish a presidential dictatorship.

Trump is waging war on two fronts: abroad against Iran, and at home against democratic rights and the working class. These are two sides of the same process. A war with Iran will inevitably be accompanied by an escalation of political repression and social austerity. With the war budget already over $1 trillion, the working class will be forced to foot the bill.

Trump’s anti-Constitutional drive to establish a presidential dictatorship within the United States and the launching of an illegal war against Iran are interconnected elements of a criminal government. The interaction of these elements threatens the US and the world with a catastrophe. If there is any country that is in desperate need of a regime change, it is the United States.

The same basic processes are present in Europe. The talks held by the European imperialist powers with Iran’s foreign minister in Vienna Friday were a fraud, aimed at browbeating Tehran into surrender. Any reservations they have about Trump’s rush to war concern their own predatory interests: that they could be burned in the inferno Trump and Netanyahu have set alight; that all-out war in the Middle East will divert US war materiel from Ukraine; and that they are at risk of being cut out by Washington of the spoils of imperialist conquest and plunder.

The Chinese and Russian capitalist regimes, basing themselves on the most pragmatic, short-term calculations and clinging to the hope that they can reach some accommodation with Trump and US imperialism, have taken no action to oppose the onslaught on Iran.

As for the Iranian regime, its conduct before and during the war has only underscored that the national bourgeoisie is incapable of waging a struggle against imperialism. Even now after Trump has demanded “unconditional surrender,” it persists in making appeals to the would-be fascist dictator, while pleading for the European imperialist gangsters to intervene on its behalf.

This war, like World War I and World War II, arises out of the fundamental contradictions of capitalism: between a globally integrated economy and the outmoded nation-state system, and between private ownership of the means of production and the social character of modern economic life.

The International Committee of the Fourth International and its affiliated Socialist Equality Parties call for mass opposition to the Trump administration’s plans to launch a direct war against Iran. We call for protests, demonstrations and walkouts to oppose this act of imperialist aggression.

Only the international working class, armed with a revolutionary socialist program, can put an end to imperialist war and the capitalist system that breeds it. The ICFI insists that the fight against war must be fused with the fight for workers’ power and the socialist reorganization of global economic life.

Stop the war against Iran! Read More »

අධිරාජ්‍යවාදය තම “අවසාන විසඳුම” ගාසා තීරයේ දියත් කරයි

class struggles, lead article, News, politics, politics & economics, War, World War / May 22, 2025

ලෝසවෙ ජාත්‍යන්තර කතෘ මණ්ඩලය විසිනි.

මෙහි පලවන්නේ ලෝක සමාජවාදී වෙබ් අඩවියේ (ලෝසවෙඅ) 2025 මැයි 19 දින ‘Imperialism launches its “final solution” in Gaza’ යන හිසින් පලවූ ලෝසවෙ ජාත්‍යන්තර කතෘ මණ්ඩලය විසින් ලියන ලද ඉදිරිදර්ශන ලිපියේ සිංහල පරිවර්තනය යි.

සති අන්තයේ ඊශ්‍රායල ආරක්ෂක හමුදා (IDF) විසින් “ගිඩියොන්ගේ යුධරථ මෙහෙයුම” පූර්ණ පරිමාණයෙන් දියත් කිරීම නිවේදනය කරන ලද අතර එය ගාසා තීරයේ “අවසාන පියවර” ලෙස අගමැති බෙන්ජමින් නෙතන්යාහු විස්තර කළේය. මෙම භාෂාව “අවසාන විසඳුම” – යුරෝපයේ යුදෙව්වන් ක්‍රමාණුකූලව සමූලඝාතනය කිරීම සඳහා නාසි ජර්මනියේ යෙදුම- ප්‍රතිරාවය කරයි.

මෙහෙයුමේ අරමුන වන්නේ ගාසා තීරය මුළුමනින්ම මිලිටරි ආක්‍රමණය කිරීම සහ අත්පත් කර ගැනීම, ඉතිරි ජනගහනය දකුණේ ගාල් කඳවුරුවලට බලහත්කාරයෙන් අභ්‍යන්තර විස්ථාපනය කිරීම සහ ඔවුන් පලස්තීනයෙන් මුළුමනින්ම නෙරපා හැරීමට සූදානම් වීමයි.

මෙම මෙහෙයුම සමග සමගාමීව සිරගත කර සිටින ජනගහනයට ආහාර බෙදා හැරීම, එක්සත් ජනපදය-ඊශ්‍රායලය ඒකාබද්ධව අත්පත් කර ගැනීමත්, ඇමරිකානු සැපයුම් සමාගම් සහ පුද්ගලික හමුදා කොන්ත්‍රාත්කරුවන් විසින් මුහුණ හඳුනාගැනීමේ තාක්‍ෂණය හරහා හඳුනාගෙන පූර්ව පරීක්ෂාවට ලක් වූ පුද්ගලයින්ට සාගත මට්ටමේ සලාක බෙදාහැරීමත් සිදුකරනු ඇත.

තිරය පිටුපසින් ට්‍රම්ප් පරිපාලනය, හොලෝකෝස්ට සමූලඝාතනයෙන් [දෙවන ලෝක යුද්ධ සමයේ දී හිට්ලර් ප්‍රමුඛ ෆැසිස්ට්වාදින් සිදුකළ මිලියන් 6 ක යුදෙව් ජන සංහාරය] පසු විශාලතම අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී පිටුබලය සහිත වාර්ගික ශුද්ධ කිරීමේ මෙහෙයුම මෙහෙයවයි. බලහත්කාරයෙන් අවතැන් කරන මිලියනයකට අධික පලස්තීනුවන් නැව් මගින් හෝ ගොඩබිමෙන් භාර ගැනීම සදහා – එක්සත් ජනපදයේ පිටුබලය ලබන ඉස්ලාමීය කැරලිකරුවන් විසින් පෙරලා දැමූ ආන්ඩු සහිත – ලිබියාවේ සහ සිරියාවේ පාලන තන්ත්‍රයන් සමඟ ධවල මන්දිරය සාකච්ඡා කරමින් සිටී.

දෙවන ලෝක යුද්ධය අවසන් වීමෙන් වසර අසූවකට පසුව, නාසි ජර්මනියේ දැවැන්තම අපරාධ – මහා පරිමාන සමූල ඝාතනය, හිතාමතා මහා පරිමාන සාගතය සහ වාර්ගික ශුද්ධ කිරීම – අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී බලවතුන් විසින් ක්‍රියාත්මක කර සාමාන්‍යකරණය කරමින් සිටී.

එහෙත් හොලෝකෝස්ටයේ සැලසුම්කරුවන් ඔවුන්ගේ අපරාධවල පරිමාණය ජර්මානු ජනගහනයෙන් සහ ලෝකයෙන් වසන් කිරීමට උත්සාහ කළ අතර, ගාසා තීරයේ සමූල ජන ඝාතනය මුළුමනින්ම එළිපිටම දිග හැරෙමින් තිබේ. ඇමරිකානු ජනාධිපතිවරයා පලස්තීනය ජනවාර්ගික ශුද්ධ කිරීම සහ ඈඳා ගැනීම තම පරිපාලනයේ මූලෝපායික අරමුණක් ලෙස විවෘතව ප්‍රකාශ කර ඇත.

ගාසා තීරයේ ජන සංහාරය ට්‍රම්ප් සහ නෙතන්යාහු විසින් මෙහෙයවනු ලැබූව, එය සියලු අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී බලවතුන් විසින් ආරක්ෂා කර නීත්‍යානුකූල කර ඇති අතර ධනේශ්වර අරාබි පාලන තන්ත්‍රයන් විසින් ඊට පහසුකම් සලසා ඇත.

අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී ආන්ඩු ඊශ්‍රායලයට “තමන්ව ආරක්ෂා කර ගැනීමට අයිතියක් ඇති” බව ප්‍රකාශ කිරීම මගින් සමූහ මිනීමැරුම් සහ වාර්ගික ශුද්ධ කිරීම් නීත්‍යානුකූල කරයි. යුරෝපය පුරා සෑම ආන්ඩුවක්ම ජන සංහාරයට එරෙහි විරෝධතා වංචනිකව “සෙමිටික් (යුදෙව්)-විරෝධී” ලෙස හෙලා දැක, සමූහ අත්අඩංගුවට ගැනීම් සිදු කරමින් සහ ඊශ්‍රායල රාජ්‍යයේ අපරාධවලට එරෙහිව කතා කරන අයට හිංසා පීඩා කරමින් සිටී.

ජර්මානු චාන්සලර් ෆ්‍රෙඩ්රික් මර්ස්, ඊශ්‍රායල අගමැති බෙන්ජමින් නෙතන්යාහුට ජර්මනියට ආරාධනා කර ඇති අතර, නෙතන්යාහු අත්අඩංගුවට ගැනීම සඳහා ජාත්‍යන්තර අපරාධ අධිකරණය විසින් නිකුත් කරන ලද වරෙන්තුව කඩ කරන බවට ප්‍රතිඥා දී තිබේ.

සෞදි අරාබිය, කටාර් සහ එක්සත් අරාබි එමීර් රාජ්‍යය වෙත ට්‍රම්ප්ගේ සංචාරය ගාසා ජන සංහාරයේ අරාබි පාලන තන්ත්‍රවල හවුල්කාරිත්වය සමස්ත ලෝකය ඉදිරියේ ප්‍රදර්ශනය කර ඇත. ගාසා තීරයේ විනාශය වෙනුවෙන් ට්‍රම්ප් ඊශ්‍රායලයට ඩොලර් බිලියන ගණනින් බෝම්බ ලබා දෙද්දී කටාර් රජ පවුල ට්‍රම්ප්ට ඩොලර් මිලියන 400 ක පෞද්ගලික ජම්බෝ ජෙට් යානයක් තෑගි කර තිබේ.

පලස්තීනුවන් සාගතයේ තැබීම හෙළා දකින නාම මාත්‍ර ප්‍රකාශ නිකුත් කළ ද, අරාබි පාලන තන්ත්‍ර ගාසා තීරයේ සමූල ජන සංහාරයට සහ බලහත්කාරයෙන් අවතැන් කිරීමට හවුල්කාරී වේ.

මාධ්‍යවේදී බොබ් වුඩ්වර්ඩ් යුද්ධය නම් සිය පොතේ සඳහන් කර ඇති පරිදි , ජෝර්දානයේ දෙවන අබ්දුල්ලා රජු 2023 දී රාජ්‍ය ලේකම් ඇන්ටනි බ්ලින්කන්ට පැවසුවේ, “ඊශ්‍රායලය හමාස් පරාජය කළ යුතුය. අපි මෙය ප්‍රසිද්ධියේ නොකියමු, නමුත් අපි හමාස් පරාජයට සහාය දෙමු.” ඊශ්‍රායලය පලස්තීනුවන් සමූල ඝාතනය කරමින් සිටියදී පවා ඔහුගේ පාලනයට අවශ්‍ය වන්නේ ඊශ්‍රායලය සමඟ සාමය පවත්වා ගැනීමට පමණක් බව ඊජිප්තු ජනාධිපති අබ්දෙල් ෆාටා එල්-සිසි බ්ලින්කන්ට පැවසූ බවත් වුඩ්වර්ඩ් ලිවීය.

“ජාත්‍යන්තර නීතියේ” ආයතන සිදුවෙමින් පවතින සමූල ජන සංහාරය හමුවේ සම්පූර්ණයෙන්ම බංකොලොත් බව ඔප්පු කර ඇත. අඩ සියවසක අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී අනුග්‍රහය ලත් “සාම සැලසුම්”, එක්සත් ජාතීන්ගේ මහා මණ්ඩලයේ සහ ආරක්ෂක මණ්ඩලයේ ගණන් කළ නොහැකි ඡන්ද, ජාත්‍යන්තර අධිකරණයේ තීන්දු සහ ජාත්‍යන්තර අපරාධ අධිකරණයේ චෝදනා සම්පූර්ණයෙන්ම අර්ථ විරහිත බව ඔප්පු වී ඇත.

යෝධ පරිමාණ අපරාධයක් වන ගාසා තීරයේ දිග හැරෙමින් පවතින දෙය අතිශය දුරදිග යන දේශපාලන ඇඟවුම් දරා සිටි. එය අධිරාජ්‍යවාදයේ සහ සියලු “ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී” ධනේශ්වර ආන්ඩුවල අති මූලික ස්වභාවය හෙලිදරව් කරයි. පළමු ලෝක යුද්ධය මධ්‍යයේ 1916 දී ලියන ලද අධිරාජ්‍යවාදය පිලිබඳ ඔහුගේ නොනැසෙන සුළු විග්‍රහයේ දී, ලෙනින් අනතුරු ඇඟවූයේ, ධනේශ්වර ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදය සහ පැරණි රාජාණ්ඩු ආඥාදායකත්වය අතර වෙනස මැකී යමින් පවතින බවයි. ශතවර්ෂයකට පසුව, මානව හිමිකම් ආරක්ෂා කරන්නන් යැයි කියා ගන්නා නවීන අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී පාලන තන්ත්‍ර, සමස්ථ ජනගහණයක් සමූල ඝාතනය කිරීම, යුක්ති සහගත කිරීම, සහාය දීම සහ ඊට අත්පොළසන් දීම පවා කරති.

සමූල ජන ඝාතනය සාමාන්‍යකරණය කිරීම, ප්‍රජාතන්ත්‍රවාදී අයිතීන්ට එරෙහි ප්‍රහාර තීව්‍ර කිරීම, කම්කරු පන්තිය දුප්පත් කිරීම සහ අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී ආන්ඩුවල යුද සැලසුම් වලින් වෙන් කළ නොහැකි සංරචකයකි. වොෂින්ටනයේ සිට බර්ලින්, ලන්ඩන් සහ ටෝකියෝ දක්වා සියලුම අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී අගනගරවල ආන්ඩු සමාජ වැඩසටහන් කප්පාදු කරමින් මිලිටරි වියදම් දැවැන්ත ලෙස පුලුල් කරමින් සිටී.

සෑම අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී ආන්ඩුවකම නායකයින් – සහ ඔවුන්ගේ මැද පෙරදිග අනුගාමික පාලන තන්ත්‍රයන් – ඊශ්‍රායලය විසින් සිදු කරන ලද සමූල ජන ඝාතනයට සහාය දෙන අතර, ලෝක ජනගහනයෙන් අතිමහත් බහුතරයක් මෙම අපරාධ වලින් කම්පනයට පත්ව සිටිති. ලොව පුරා ප්‍රධාන නගරවල සහ උප නගරවල- ගණන් කළ නොහැකි දහස් ගණන් යුදෙව්වන් ද ඇතුළු- මිලියන සංඛ්‍යාත ජනයා ගාසා සමූල ජන ඝාතනයට එරෙහි මහජන විරෝධතාවලට සම්බන්ධ වී සිටිති. සමූල ජන ඝාතනයෙන් කෝපයට පත් ලෝක ජනතාව සහ ඔවුන්ගේ ආන්ඩු අතර සමහන් කළ නොහැකි අගාධයක් විවර වී ඇත.

සමූල ජන ඝාතනය ආරම්භයේ සිට මාස දහනවයක් ගත වන විට, යම් මූලික නිගමනවලට එළඹීම අවශ්‍ය වේ. ප්‍රථමයෙන් සහ ප්‍රධාන වශයෙන්, අධිරාජ්‍යවාදී බලවතුන්ට හෝ ජාත්‍යන්තර නීති ආයතනවලට ආයාචනා කිරීම හරහා ගාසා සමූල ජන ඝාතනය නැවැත්විය නොහැක. ගාසා තීරයේ සංහාරය නැවැත්විය හැකි එකම මාර්ගය කම්කරු පන්තිය බලමුලු ගැන්වීමයි. සමූල ජන ඝාතනයට එරෙහි අරගලය රඳා පවතින්නේ පන්ති අරගලයේ පුළුල් කිරීම සහ කම්කරු පන්තියේ සමාජ, ආර්ථික හා දේශපාලන අයිතීන් ආරක්ෂා කිරීම මත ය.

අධිරාජ්‍යවාදය තම “අවසාන විසඳුම” ගාසා තීරයේ දියත් කරයි Read More »

Germany’s Social Democrats and conservatives elect Merz as Chancellor, sign reactionary coalition agreement

Democratic Rights, english, Far Right, Fascism, News, politics, politics & economics, War / May 7, 2025

By Johannes Stern.

On Tuesday afternoon, Friedrich Merz (CDU) was elected in the second round of voting and subsequently appointed as the new German Chancellor by President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD).

Merz had initially failed in the first ballot—a unique occurrence in German post-war history. With 621 MPs present, Merz was six votes short of the required majority of 316 votes to become Chancellor: 310 MPs voted for him, 307 against him, there were three abstentions, and one vote was invalid. Nine MPs did not take part in the vote.

Merz’s unexpected non-election had caused feverish nervousness in all Bundestag parties. In the end, the Bundestag parties agreed to schedule a second round of voting on the same day.

Shortly before the vote, the notoriously right-wing CDU/CSU parliamentary group leader Jens Spahn announced that a new ballot would be held with the agreement of the CDU/CSU, SPD, Green and Left Party parliamentary groups. The whole of Europe, perhaps even the whole world, was watching this election. He then thanked everyone who had made a second round of voting possible so quickly.

The role of the Left Party and the Greens as essentially right-wing parties of the state could not be clearer: in the face of a looming political crisis in Berlin, they played a key role in installing Merz and paving the way for his extreme right-wing government.

The Merz government heralds a new stage in the rightward evolution of the ruling class. It is undoubtedly the most reactionary and anti-working class government since the fall of the Nazi regime 80 years ago. Its central aim is to remove the last restraints imposed on German militarism as a result of its unprecedented crimes in the Second World War. With the adoption of war credits amounting to €1 trillion on March 18, the Bundestag has already paved the way for a massive military build-up.

The coalition government of the CDU/Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Social Democrats (SPD) will not only rearm like Hitler. It will organise a historic onslaught on social spending to finance rearmament and establish a police state to enforce it against the enormous opposition among the population. Domestically, it will also adopt the refugee policy of the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and help the fascists’ nationalistically charged “cultural policy” achieve a breakthrough.

Leading members of the government, such as Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt and State Secretary for Culture Wolfram Weimer, are politically far to the right and could easily be members of the AfD. Chancellor Merz himself embodies the interests of the financial oligarchy like no other. For four years, he headed the German branch of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.

The SPD, which was founded more than 150 years ago under the banner of Marxism, is now the organiser of this shift to the right as a right-wing state party. Yesterday, it announced that Boris Pistorius (SPD) will remain Minister of Defense under Merz. Pistorius personifies the “new era” in foreign policy ushered in by SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who received a farewell at a militaristic spectacle on Monday evening. Pistorius has set himself the goal of making Germany “fit for war” again and preparing it for a direct war against the nuclear-armed power Russia.

Party leader Lars Klingbeil takes over as Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister. In this role, he will ensure that the costs of horrendous military spending and escalating global trade wars are borne by the working population. He will work closely with the new SPD Labor Minister Bärbel Bas, who, as a nominal “party leftist,” will push through the brutal cuts in close cooperation with the trade unions.

The coalition agreement signed yesterday reflects the reactionary personnel of the new government. The focus is on war policy and the comprehensive militarisation of society. The following goals, among others, are mentioned:

Dominance over Europe and a role for German imperialism as a world power

In the coalition agreement, the CDU/CSU and SPD define the entire globe as a zone of influence for German imperialism. According to the agreement, the German government is striving for an Africa policy that “does justice to the strategic importance of Africa,” declares that the “Indo-Pacific region” is “of elementary interest” and announces that it intends to “continue to show a presence in the region.” The “expansion of strategic partnerships with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean” is also “of particular importance.” Overall, the aim is to “intensify bilateral relations with the countries of the Global South and expand them into a global network.”

As in the past, this global power politics means German support for genocide and war. The coalition declares the “security of Israel” to be a “fundamental German national security interest”—in the midst of the genocide committed by the far-right Netanyahu regime against the Palestinian population. At the same time, it assures the Islamist forces in Syria of support “in the stabilisation and economic reconstruction of the country”—in order to gain geopolitical influence and deport refugees.

With regard to the war against Russia, the coalition agreement announces that “military, civilian and political support for Ukraine will be substantially strengthened and reliably continued together with partners.” Germany must “for the first time since the end of the Second World War … be in a position to guarantee its own security to a much greater extent.” Germany will assume “a leading role” in the further development of the Common Security and Defense Policy (CSDP).

Militarisation of schools and universities

“We are anchoring our Bundeswehr [Armed Forces] even more firmly in public life and are committed to strengthening the role of youth officers, who fulfil an important educational mission in schools,” it says on page 130 in the section on “Defence policy.” It continues: “We are committed to dismantling obstacles that impede dual-use research or civil-military research cooperation, for example.” We will “eliminate the deficit that exists in Germany in the area of strategic security research and advocate its promotion in the sense of a networked understanding of security.”

Reintroduction of compulsory military service

“We are creating a new, attractive military service that is initially based on voluntary service,” explain the coalition partners. The design of this service will be based on “the criteria of attractiveness, meaningfulness and contribution to the ability to grow.” In doing so, “the Swedish military service model” is being used as a guide and “the conditions for military registration and monitoring will be created this year.”

Development of a war economy and massive armaments industry

The planning and procurement system will be “reformed” and “new implementation paths” will be enforced for major projects and future technologies. In particular, “future technologies for the Bundeswehr” are to be promoted, including “satellite systems, artificial intelligence, unmanned (also combat-capable) systems, electronic warfare, cyber, software-defined defence and cloud applications as well as hypersonic systems.” This requires “simplified access and increased exchange with research institutions, the academic sector, start-ups and industry.”

The “special infrastructure fund” of €500 billion is also designed to prepare for war. “We are simplifying the definition of requirements and approval for military construction projects and creating exemptions in construction, environmental and public procurement law as well as in the protection and dedication of military land with a Federal Armed Forces Infrastructure Acceleration Act,” it says on page 132. The “concerns and infrastructure measures for overall defence” are to be “established as an overriding public interest and prioritised in implementation over other state tasks.”

The historic rearmament and war policy will be financed by equally historic attacks on the working class. “We will make a considerable contribution to consolidation in this legislative period,” it says in the section on “budget consolidation.” The agreement only mentions a few specific measures—such as cutting citizens’ benefits—but the role model is clear: the US, where the Trump regime is ruthlessly cutting social spending in the interests of the financial oligarchy and destroying all existing social rights.

The deeply anti-worker policy of the new federal government is based on the support of all Bundestag (Federal Parliament) parties. The Greens provided the CDU/CSU and SPD with the necessary two-thirds majority in the Bundestag to pass the war credits. The Left Party backed it in the Bundesrat (Federal Council). And the trade unions are also firmly on the side of the government. They reaffirmed their loyalty to the rearmament course and worked systematically in recent weeks to isolate the wage struggles at the post office, in the public sector and at the Berlin Transport Company, and to prevent a joint all-out strike by the working class.

The broad support for militarism and social spending cuts by all Bundestag parties and trade unions shows that the struggle against fascism, war and social inequality can only be waged through the independent mobilisation of the working class. In its statement on the formation of the government, the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) therefore called for “the establishment of rank-and-file committees in workplaces and neighbourhoods that will allow workers to take the fight against mass redundancies and wage cuts into their own hands and combine it with the fight against war.”

The statement continues:

We counterpose the international unity of the workers to the growth of nationalism, trade war and rearmament. The war can only be stopped and social and democratic rights can only be defended if capitalism itself is abolished and replaced by a socialist society in which people’s needs, not profit interests, take centre stage. The big banks and corporations must be expropriated and placed under democratic control.

This article was originally published in the World Socialist Web Site Here

Germany’s Social Democrats and conservatives elect Merz as Chancellor, sign reactionary coalition agreement Read More »