13 October 2018

As evidence mounts of Khashoggi’s murder
Trump rejects calls for US to end arms sales to Saudi monarchy

By Jordan Shilton, 13 October 2018

The imperialist powers, with the US in the lead, are up to their necks in the blood-soaked repression of the Saudi regime, which has been exposed once again by the apparent murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Murder in Istanbul

The disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the hypocrisy of the New York Times

Pages purged by Facebook were on blacklist promoted by Washington Post

By Andre Damon, 13 October 2018

PropOrNot, an organization that published a blacklist of oppositional media organizations in 2016, hailed Facebook’s actions as the precursor to shutting down the targeted organizations' web sites.

Facebook carries out massive purge of oppositional pages

Leaked Google document: Tech firms have shifted away from “free speech and towards censorship”

The US military’s vision for state censorship

More on internet censorship »

Bonus removal cancels out Amazon’s UK pay rise

By Alice Summers, 13 October 2018

Workers are effectively paying for their own wage increase through the slashing of employee benefits, share and incentive schemes, with some possibly seeing a net loss.

Injured US Amazon workers face “workers compensation” regime rigged in favor of employers

Bernie Sanders covers for Jeff Bezos as fraud of $15 pay raise at Amazon is exposed

More on Amazon »

US hotel workers continue strikes in eight cities

By our reporters, 13 October 2018

The workers are rebelling against poverty level wages and inadequate benefits that have left many struggling to keep their heads above water.

Striking workers rally at Westin Book Cadillac Hotel in Detroit

Marriott hotel workers strike spreads to Hawaii

Sri Lankan tea estate workers step up demands for higher pay

By M. Thevarajah, 13 October 2018

Demonstrations by estate workers underscore growing working-class opposition to the attacks of the government and employers.

Hurricane Michael brings death, devastation to US Southeast

By Kate Randall, 13 October 2018

Mexico Beach, Florida, known for its pristine beaches, fishing and boating, now resembles a war zone, with 95 percent of its structures uninhabitable.

Hurricane Michael leaves trail of death and destruction in southeastern US

UN report warns of catastrophic consequences of climate change within 20 years

Hurricane Michael makes landfall in Florida as category four storm

Liberal newsweekly Die Zeit defends far-right publishers at Frankfurt Book Fair

By Johannes Stern, 13 October 2018

The latest edition of Die Zeit exemplifies the manner in which the ruling elite in Germany and its leading media are promoting the far-right Alternative for Germany.

Hitler’s resurrection in Germany

Chemnitz: German Neo-Nazi terrorist group relied on extremist network

More on the growth of the extreme right in Europe »

Macron fails to name new French government

By Francis Dubois, 13 October 2018

More than ten days after Interior Minister Gérard Collomb resigned, President Emmanuel Macron again missed a self-imposed deadline to name a new government.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry:
Survivors and bereaved give evidence—“We will not be silenced anymore”

By Paul Bond, 13 October 2018

The evidence reveals a devastating picture of official negligence before and after the fire.

Kilometres from the ashes of Grenfell Tower
British royals spend millions on palace improvements

More on the Grenfell Tower inferno »

Russia: Putin ally Kudrin pushes for rapprochement with the imperialist powers

By Clara Weiss, 13 October 2018

Underlying the push toward improving ties with imperialism are the growing class tensions in Russia itself.

Kremlin suffers defeats in regional elections

Australian government flags forcing new immigrants to live in designated zones

By Mike Head, 13 October 2018

The scapegoating of immigrants underscores the wholesale lurch to the right within the political establishment signalled by Prime Minister Morrison’s installation.

More on Australian immigrant and refugee issues »

Australian “edu-business” set to profit under Gonski 2.0

By Erika Zimmer, 13 October 2018

Gonski 2.0 advocates an even more regressive testing regime than the NAPLAN model implemented by the Rudd Labor government in 2008.

Australian government hands private schools another $4.6 billion

New in German

Der Kampf gegen die rechte Gefahr erfordert eine sozialistische Perspektive

der Sozialistischen Gleichheitspartei, 13. Oktober 2018

Am heutigen Samstag werden in Berlin 40.000 Teilnehmer zur Demonstration „#unteilbar – Solidarität statt Ausgrenzung“ erwartet. Die Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei verteilt dort den folgenden Text als Flugblatt.

Facebook zensiert massiv oppositionelle Seiten

Andre Damon, 13. Oktober 2018

In Missachtung elementarer demokratischer Rechte hat Facebook oppositionelle Medienseiten mit Millionen von Followern gelöscht.

Wall Street: Weitere Kursverluste inmitten großer Schwankungen

Nick Beams, 13. Oktober 2018

Alle wichtigen Indizes lagen am Donnerstag unter dem gleitenden 200-Tages-Durchschnitt, der als Schlüsselindikator für die Richtung des Marktes gilt.

„Ich habe mich auf die DDR eingelassen“
„Gundermann” – der neue Film von Andreas Dresen

Bernd Reinhardt, 13. Oktober 2018

Gerhard Gundermann (1955-1998) war ein DDR-Liedermacher der 80er und 90er Jahre.

New in Turkish

Brezilya’daki aşırı sağcı tehlike ve İşçi Partisi’nin rolü

Bill Van Auken, 12 Ekim 2018

Brezilya’da geçtiğimiz Pazar günü düzenlenen genel seçimler, siyasi duruma uzun süre egemen olmuş partileri enkaz haline getiren siyasi bir depremle sonuçlandı.

AKP hükümeti 3. Havaalanı inşaatı işçilerine yönelik saldırısını arttırıyor

Muhabirlerimizden, 12 Ekim 2018

İşçi sınıfının temel sosyal ve demokratik haklarının savunusu, komplo kurulan tüm inşaat işçilerinin serbest bırakılması uğruna mücadeleyi gerektirmektedir.

Fransa’da kemer sıkmaya karşı mücadeleleri birleştirmek için taban komiteleri inşa edin!

Alex Lantier, 12 Ekim 2018

Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi destekleyicilerinin, 9 Ekim’de, Fransa genelindeki kentlerde, işçi ve öğrenci sendikalarının Devlet Başkanı Emmanuel Macron’un politikalarına karşı çağrısını yaptığı eylemlerde dağıttığ ı açıklama.

Suudi gazeteci Cemal Kaşıkçı’nın kaybolması ve New York Times’ın ikiyüzlülüğü

Jordan Shilton, 12 Ekim 2018

Kaşıkçı cinayeti, eğer doğruysa, Suudi rejiminin gerçekleştirdiği uzun bir terör ve gaddarlık eylemleri listesine eklenecek.

New in Spanish

La resurrección de Hitler en Alemania

Por Peter Schwarz, 13 octubre 2018

Un artículo de opinión del presidente de Alternativa para Alemania (AfD), Alexander Gauland, basada en gran parte en un discurso de Hitler en 1933, fue publicada en uno de los más prominentes diarios alemanes.

Facebook lleva a cabo la purga masiva de las páginas de oposición

Por Andre Damon, 13 octubre 2018

En un asalto radical a los derechos democráticos, Facebook ha llevado a cabo una purga de las páginas de los medios de comunicación opositores con millones de seguidores.

¡Construye comités de base para unificar las luchas contra la austeridad en Francia!

Por el Partido Socialista por la Igualdad (Francia), 13 octubre 2018

Los trabajadores se enfrentan a elegir entre la contrarrevolución social del presidente Emmanuel Macron y una lucha revolucionaria para derrocar al gobierno de Macron.

El FMI reduce su proyección de crecimiento global

Por Nick Beams, 13 octubre 2018

El informe de perspectivas mundiales advierte que las tensiones comerciales han afectado el "balance de riesgos" a la baja.

Other Languages

Perspective

The “Grievance Studies” hoax exposes postmodernist charlatans

13 October 2018

Helen Pluckrose, James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian have struck a well-timed blow against postmodernism, a reactionary obstacle to the development of scientific socialist consciousness.

Earlier Perspectives »

History of the Fourth International

The struggle for socialism and the importance of history: David North interviewed on Radio Sri Lanka

12 October 2018

Watch: David North interviewed on Sri Lanka’s English-language Channel Eye TV

Eighty Years of the Fourth International: The Lessons of History and the Struggle for Socialism Today

By David North, 9 October 2018

Sri Lankan Prime TV News reports on David North’s press conference

Text of David North's remarks to Sri Lankan press conference on Trotskyism

Large Colombo audience hears David North’s lecture on the history of the Fourth International

By our reporters, 9 October 2018

The 50th anniversary of the founding of the SEP (Sri Lanka)
The lessons of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party’s Great Betrayal

By Rohantha De Silva and Vilani Peiris, 24 September 2018


PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

On the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International

By David North, 3 September 2018

David North, the chairperson of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site, will be speaking in the United States this fall to mark the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International.

Featured Video

Watch: Live Q&A; on the CIA democrats, with Niles Niemuth and Patrick Martin

Socialist Equality Party congressional candidate Niles Niemuth and WSWS writer Patrick Martin answered questions from Facebook commenters at this live event on October 13. Follow Niles on Facebook now to participate in the next live discussion. Buy the pamphlet on the CIA Democrats here.

Book review

Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine: A prescient warning of the danger of nuclear war

By Kevin Martinez, 13 October 2018

The famous whistleblower of the “Pentagon Papers” provides a disturbing and timely memoir of his days preparing nuclear war policies for the Pentagon.

Commentary

France’s Mélenchon tacitly backs Wagenknecht’s xenophobic Aufstehen group

By Anthony Torres, 13 October 2018

By his silence, Mélenchon is tacitly supporting forces within his Unsubmissive France party that are orienting toward right-wing populism and the militarization of Europe.

US places alleged “Chinese spy” on public trial

By Mike Head, 12 October 2018

US ambassador to New Zealand continues public attacks on China

Pompeo visit heightens US-China rift

Pentagon report points to US preparations for total war

More on US militarism »

Billionaire Bloomberg rejoins Democratic Party

By Patrick Martin, 12 October 2018

The New York Times laments the exit of Nikki Haley

The case of Sydney Schanberg
How the NY Times shielded Trump and the Manhattan real estate mafia

NY Times exposé on Trump fortune: An empire built on tax evasion and fraud
“Behind every great fortune there is a great crime” – Honoré de Balzac

More on US politics »

The New York Times’ Alexis Grenell denounces white women for upholding the “patriarchy”

By Genevieve Leigh, 12 October 2018

The Kavanaugh confirmation and the US midterm elections

The #MeToo campaign versus the presumption of innocence

More on the sexual misconduct witch-hunt »

Canada: The unions’ suppression of the 1995-97 anti-Harris movement: Political lessons for today
Part 4: The SEP, the unions and the pseudo-left

By Carl Bronski and Roger Jordan, 11 October 2018

To defeat the social counter-revolution spearheaded by Ford, workers need to build new organizations of struggle in political and organizational opposition to the pro-capitalist unions and NDP.

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE | PART FOUR

Canada: Workers need a socialist program to fight the right-wing populist danger

By the Socialist Equality Party (Canada), 9 October 2018

“History never teaches anyone anything”
Russian neo-Stalinist defends Partido Obrero’s “refounding” of Fourth International

Workers Struggles

Indian sanitation workers union shuts down month-long strike; Western Australian bus drivers strike over pay
Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific

13 October 2018

The World Socialist Web Site invites workers and other readers to contribute to this regular feature.

Tamil Nadu police arrest hundreds of striking Indian autoworkers

By Arun Kumar and Moses Rajkumar, 11 October 2018

Strikes and protests have broken out in Tamil Nadu companies that employ the majority of India’s 7.6 million auto manufacturing workers.

Argentine teachers facing massive pay cuts strike for 48 hours

By Andrea Lobo, 12 October 2018

As union ignores strike authorization votes
Tubing company locks out steelworkers in Trenton, Georgia

By Shelley Connor, 12 October 2018

3,000 Dutch public service workers protest in The Hague

By our reporters, 5 October 2018

Protest march on October 2 in the Netherlands
The fight against public sector cutbacks requires a socialist perspective

Fiat Chrysler Kokomo workers angered by UAW obstruction to fight over health and safety

By Shannon Jones, 5 October 2018

Obituary

Carl Cooley: 1927-2018

By Fred Mazelis, 12 October 2018

Cooley, a former autoworker and high school and college teacher, had considered himself a socialist for most of his adult life. He was the US SEP’s congressional candidate in Maine in the 2004 election.

Arts Review

Toronto International Film Festival 2018: Part 5
Errol Morris provides Steven Bannon a platform (American Dharma), Werner Herzog celebrates Mikhail Gorbachev (Meeting Gorbachev) and other appalling developments

By David Walsh, 12 October 2018

Mack the Knife—Brecht’s Threepenny Film: The famed “play with music,” and the controversies surrounding it, brought to life

By Sybille Fuchs, 11 October 2018

Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born: It’s true, the artist must have “something to say”

By Joanne Laurier, 10 October 2018

More arts reviews »

IYSSE

Open letter by students condemns right-wing offensive at Berlin’s Humboldt University

By International Youth and Students for Social Equality (Germany), 11 October 2018

Student organisations from Humboldt University and across Germany published an open letter denouncing the cooperation of the university administration with the far right and its attacks on students’ social and democratic rights.

Students denounce CIA partnership with University of Illinois Chicago

By the IYSSE at UIC, 11 October 2018

NYU’s Washington DC campus: Academia aligns with the Department of Defense

By Leslie Murtagh, 11 October 2018

Join the International Youth and Students for Social Equality and take up the fight for socialism!

By the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (US), 31 August 2018

SEP 2018 Election Campaign

Debbie Dingell: A candidate of wealth and privilege

By Tom Hall, 9 October 2018

Niles Niemuth lays out socialist perspective on healthcare, immigration and more at televised forum

The Socialist Equality Party's candidate for US congress in Michigan's 12th district, Niles Niemuth, appeared alongside his opponents from the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as the pseudo-left Working Class Party, at this televised forum on October 5. Watch Niles' answers above. See the full video, including responses from all candidates, here.

Socialist Equality Party candidate Niles Niemuth speaks in Ann Arbor on the right to universal health care

Mobilize the working class to defend nurses and secure the right to health care!

“Genuine socialists are fighting to put the working class in control”

Socialist Equality Party congressional candidate Niles Niemuth answered questions from commenters at this live online event on September 29. Follow Niles on Facebook now to participate in upcoming live events.

Campaign events for Socialist Equality Party candidate Niles Niemuth
Socialism: What it is and how to fight for it

18 September 2018

Campaign website »

Socialist Equality Party

Build rank-and-file committees to unify struggles against austerity in France!

By the Socialist Equality Party (France), 9 October 2018

Workers face the choice between President Emmanuel Macron’s social counterrevolution and a revolutionary struggle to bring down the Macron government.

Socialist Equality Party (UK) Public Meetings:
The fight to drive out the right-wing from the Labour Party and the struggle for socialism

SEP (Australia) meeting outlines political issues behind coup against Malcolm Turnbull

International Amazon Workers Voice

Watch: What do Amazon job applicants think about $15/hr?

More on Amazon »

25 years ago: Clinton announces stepped-up intervention in Somalia

US President Bill Clinton, on a nationally televised address October 7, 1993, announced that he was sending 2,350 more American soldiers to Somalia.

More »

50 years ago: Military officers overthrow Panamanian president

Just 11 days after being inaugurated, On October 11, 1968, Panamanian President Arnulfo Arias was overthrown by the military.

More »

75 years ago: Italy declares war against Nazi Germany

On October 13, 1943, the Italian government, led by King Victor Emmanuel and Premier Pietro Badoglio, declared war against its former ally, Nazi Germany, just three months after the fall of Mussolini and Italy’s surrender to the Allies.

More »

 

100 years ago: British troops capture Beirut

The 7th Division of the British Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) occupied Beirut, the capital city in what is now Lebanon, on October 8, 1918 to secure the roads to Homs in Syria.

More »

History

Vadim Rogovin and the sociology of Stalinism

By Andrea Peters, 25 September 2018

September 18 marked the 20th anniversary of the death of Soviet Marxist historian and sociologist Vadim Rogovin, the author of a seven-volume series on Stalinism and the Marxist opposition to the Soviet bureaucracy.

Twenty years since the death of Marxist historian and sociologist Vadim Rogovin

By David North, 18 September 2018

Mehring Books

Mehring Books UK publishes The Heritage We Defend 30th anniversary edition

15 September 2018

The new edition of the foundational 1988 work by David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, is now available for order in the UK and Ireland.

Preface to the thirtieth anniversary edition of The Heritage We Defend

By David North, 21 June 2018

We are posting the new preface written by David North for the soon to be released thirtieth anniversary edition of The Heritage We Defend: A Contribution to the History of the Fourth International.

International Committee of the Fourth International

Resolution of the SEP (US) Fifth National Congress
The Resurgence of Class Struggle and the Tasks of the Socialist Equality Party

8 August 2018

This resolution was unanimously adopted by the Socialist Equality Party Congress, held from July 22–27, 2018.

Opening report to the Fifth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US)

By David North, 4 August 2018

Support the Socialist Equality group in Turkey!
Statement of the SE group, in sympathy with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), on the snap elections in Turkey

Security and the Fourth International

An “Exemplary Comrade”: The Socialist Workers Party’s 40-year-long cover-up of Stalinist spy Sylvia Callen: Part one

By Eric London, 14 August 2018

This is the first part in a four-part series examining the cover-up by the Socialist Workers Party beginning in 1947 of information exposing the role of Sylvia Callen, the personal secretary of long-time party leader James P. Cannon, as a Stalinist agent.

Part two | Part three | Part four

Seventy-eight years since the assassination of Leon Trotsky

By Eric London and David North, 21 August 2018

On August 21, 1940, Leon Trotsky, the founder of the Fourth International and the co-leader of the Russian Revolution, died from wounds inflicted the day before by an assassin, the Stalinist GPU agent Ramon Mercader.

Defend Julian Assange!

London: Ecuador embassy vigil marks six years since Julian Assange granted asylum

By Paul Mitchell, 18 August 2018

Christine Assange, mother of WikiLeaks editor: “I’ve not been able to speak to my son for four months”

By Richard Phillips, 24 July 2018

More on the campaign to free Julian Assange »

WSWS 20th Anniversary

Twenty years of the World Socialist Web Site: 1998–2018

By David North and Joseph Kishore, 14 February 2018

As the WSWS marks its 20th anniversary of daily posting, it is taking the lead in exposing the conspiracy by governments and corporations to censor the Internet as the ruling class prepares for war and domestic repression.

Lenin, Trotsky and the Marxism of the October Revolution

By David North, 19 March 2018

David North, chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and of the Socialist Equality Party (US), delivered this lecture at the University of Leipzig on March 16.