Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
A statement of the the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (US).
*****
Only the working class possesses the objective social power to halt dictatorship, genocide and world war. The working class can transform society, reorganizing it on the basis of human need rather than private profit. What confronts America today parallels the crisis Lincoln faced in 1861: Just as preserving democratic principles then required destroying slavery’s economic base, defending democracy today necessitates ending capitalism and establishing workers’ power and socialism.
There is simply no precedent for what is now unfolding in America. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), are the only forces advancing the fight for democratic rights under conditions of the collapse of American democracy. The time for halfway measures and liberal appeals has passed. The perspective of protest must be replaced with the perspective of class struggle.
2. The World of Debt: “Stark disparities and systemic inequalities” in the world of public debt
A record 61 countries out of the 193 United Nations member states spent at least 10 percent of government revenues on payments to the world’s financial parasites: the banks and increasingly private creditors, asset managers and hedge funds.
The impact has been devastating: some 3.4 billion people live in countries that spend more on interest than health and education.
*****
[A new UN report] points out the “stark disparities and systemic inequalities” in the world of public debt. The burden varies widely between countries depending upon the terms of financing and the types of creditors they can access and that “systemic inequalities in international financial systems are making things even more challenging”, with poor countries’ borrowing costs two to four times that of the US.
It mentions but does not dwell on the fact that increasingly low- and middle-income countries are borrowing from private creditors. Neither does it explain who these private creditors are, or the underlying economic, financial and legal processes involved.
*****
The data also underscores the enormous power the private creditors wield in countries that have to slash vital public and social services to pay them as they seek to restructure their debts.
- In Chad, Glencore delayed negotiations while continuing to be paid in full and Chad received no debt relief.
- Ethiopia’s private bondholders have refused take a “haircut” and threatened to use the UK courts to pressure Ethiopia to accept a weak deal.
- Zambia, which has poverty rates among the highest in the world, is in debt distress. It defaulted on its Eurobonds in November 2020 and has also accumulated arrears to other creditors. It has still to reach a deal with some private creditors, including UK-based Standard Chartered, after four and a half years of negotiations.
- Ghana has not been able to reach a deal with any of its non-bond private creditors, with some of them using political pressure to extract payment in full.
- Malawi has been trying to renegotiate its debt with Afreximbank and other high-interest lenders since May 2022, to little effect.
- Bondholders are refusing to restructure Ukraine’s GDP-linked warrants.
- In Sri Lanka, Hamilton Reserve Bank has rejected bondholder restructuring and is continuing to pursue a court case in New York state.
Perhaps the most egregious example is South Sudan, where Israel is reportedly seeking to ethnically cleanse Gaza’s Palestinian citizens. The impoverished oil-rich country, which became “independent” in 2011, faces a dire hunger crisis and disease outbreaks including cholera, exacerbated by ongoing climate change-induced droughts and flooding, years of conflict and waves of returnees and refugees fleeing the civil war in Sudan. Afreximbank successfully sued South Sudan for $657 million in the UK courts after it defaulted on high-interest loans, equivalent to 47 percent of South Sudan’s government revenue.
These private creditors are typically far wealthier than the countries they lend to, with BlackRock alone managing $10 trillion in assets under management, Vanguard $8 trillion and State Street $4 trillion, compared to Ghana’s GDP of $75 billion, Zambia’s $30 billion, and even Nigeria’s, Africa’s biggest economy, $475 billion.
*****
The people that control these financial vultures pay themselves enormous sums of money. In 2024, BlackRock’s CEO Laurence D. Fink received $30.77 million “compensation”, its president $21.78 million, and two others more than $10 million, while Strait Street’s CEO received $17 million. Vanguard, as a private corporation, does not disclose its executive compensation, but 10 years ago was reportedly paying its CEO around $15 million.
Utterly indifferent to the social devastation and economic impoverishment they are creating, these financial parasites have both the financial clout and the legal means, via their debt contracts, arbitration courts and investment treaties that are heavily stacked in their favor, to demand full repayment in the case of a default. For the debtor countries, or more precisely for their workers and rural poor, a default means more belt tightening, no work and more cuts in the already meager healthcare and education and destabilizes the whole economy. For the creditor, it is little more than loose change.
*****
The financial system is impossible to reform. It must be abolished, with the international working class in the advanced and less developed countries uniting on an international socialist program to take control of the global financial system as part of a broader strategy to reorganize society to meet human need, not private profit.
3. Ukrainian government proposes prison sentences for illegal border crossings
Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers introduced a bill to Ukraine’s parliament that would sharply increase the criminal liability of individuals caught illegally crossing the border, as thousands of Ukrainian men a month attempt to flee forced conscription.
The bill’s introduction is a tacit admission that the war effort is far from popular among those who are forced—often through physical coercion—to fight and die in it.
*****
The proposed crackdown on draft dodgers is an indictment of the authoritarian Zelensky regime and the entire proxy war waged by Western imperialism under the fraudulent banner of defending “democracy” in Ukraine and over the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians.
Despite previous internal polling showing largely positive support for the war, the hundreds of thousands of military age men fleeing the country either legally or illegally testifies to a very different sentiment among the country’s working class. While mass protests have yet to erupt over the war, it is clear that huge numbers of Ukrainians want no part of it. A Gallup poll in early July found that 69 percent of Ukrainians favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible. Only 24 percent support continuing to fight until victory, by far the lowest figure since the beginning of the war.
*****
The bill’s introduction takes place just as Russia has steadily advanced in the Donbass region, exposing Ukraine’s “porous” front lines which are short of soldiers as Ukrainian men continue to flee the country to avoid mobilization. These advances, which have come at a tremendous cost to both Ukrainian and Russian lives, are part of the efforts of the Russian oligarchy to bolster its negotiating position in the ongoing talks with Donald Trump about a settlement of the conflict.
According to the United Kingdom’s Defense Ministry, Russia has been advancing faster each month since March of this year and likely captured between 500 and 550 square kilometers in July alone.
In addition to advancing into the Dnipropetrovsk province in June for the first time since the war began, Russian forces have continued their encirclement of the logistics hub of Pokrovsk. The city was previously home to over 60,000 people but only 1,000 now remain as a result of the war.
While the Ukrainian government closely guards the true number of casualties in the war, experts such as Ukrainian-Canadian political science professor Ivan Katchanovski estimates that between 160,000—200,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed with about 640,000—800,000 injured. Whatever the exact number, it is clear that the number of dead soldiers in a country with a pre-war population of under 40 million represents a demographic proportion of death not seen in Europe since World War II.
4. Large marches in Australia voice hostility to Labor’s role in Gaza genocide
Following on from the anti-genocide march by up to 300,000 people across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on August 3, these were among the largest pro-Palestinian demonstrations in Australia since the Zionist ethnic cleansing began in October 2023. In Brisbane, where up to 50,000 marched, it was the biggest anti-war protest since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
The vast majority of those in attendance were ordinary workers, students and other young people, some joining the anti-genocide demonstrations for the first time, while others had been protesting week after week for nearly two years.
At least 100,000 rallied in Melbourne, 40,000 in Sydney, 15,000 in Perth, 10,000 each in Adelaide and Hobart, 5,000 in Newcastle, 2,000 in Canberra and hundreds in each of about 40 other locations, including Geelong, Cairns, Bathurst, Shepparton, Geraldton, Coffs Harbour, Katoomba and Tathra.
*****
Most strikingly, participants in yesterday’s marches voiced fury at the ongoing active support for the genocide by the Labor government, despite the claims of the protest organizers and speakers that the massive Sydney Harbour Bridge march had forced the government to start to change course by saying it would recognize a Palestinian state, supposedly to be based in the rubble of Gaza and the West Bank.
Hand-written placards in Brisbane, for example, poured particular scorn on statements by Foreign Minister Penny Wong that the export of F-35 war plane parts to Israel, permitted by the government, were “non-lethal.” Among the many such signs were: “There’s nothing non-lethal about F35s,” “Stop arming Israel” and “Stop selling weapons to Israel.”
Other placards displayed or referred to the reality that the killings, starvation of children and unfolding famine were continuing despite the hypocritical, mild statements of objection being made by governments, including Australia’s, that have backed the Israeli barbarism from the outset.
This widespread sentiment was in sharp contrast to the line being peddled by the organizers and most of the speakers, notably Greens leaders and trade union bureaucrats, that “the tide had turned” because of the Albanese government’s recent empty criticisms of the blatant starvation and other crimes against humanity being committed by the Netanyahu regime.
5. Fed chair shifts toward interest rate cut
As if attempts to manage the American economy and its dual mandate of keeping inflation down and employment up, does the Federal Reserve Bank act in the interests of all Americans?
6. Bernie Sanders’ Mission Impossible: Save the Democratic Party
The role of Sanders, [Zohran] Mamdani and the [pseudo-leftist Democratic Socialists of America] is not to lead a “political revolution” but to act as a fireman, snuffing out, alongside the trade union bureaucracies, the flames of class struggle and mass discontent before they can grow into an independent mass movement of the working class aimed not at reforming capitalism, but overturning it.
The Socialist Equality Party says what Sanders cannot and will not say: The fight against Trump is inseparable from the fight against the oligarchy, and the fight against the oligarchy is a fight against the capitalist system. There is no resolution to the unprecedented crisis confronting the working class in the United States and internationally except through mass social struggle, the aim of which must be the conquest of political power and the socialist reorganization of economic life. This struggle must be waged in opposition to the Republicans, the Democrats, and all the political representatives of the ruling class—including Sanders himself.
7. Anti-genocide protesters attacked and beaten at St. Louis town hall event for Democrat Wesley Bell
At his first in-person townhall meeting on August 19 in the First Congressional District in St. Louis, Missouri, Democratic Representative Wesley Bell was confronted by protesters, many of them Jewish, who criticized his support for the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza.
*****
Bell’s private security team and police from at least two different jurisdictions, including Pagedale and St. Louis Metro police, moved to shut down the event by shoving several young women and men, grabbing them by the throat, tossing one into a wall by her hair, and throwing them to the ground amid a flurry of verbal threats.
St. Louis Metro police issued a statement attempting to distance itself from the event, saying none of its officers were involved.
8. Pentagon secret plans to send troops into Chicago
The US Department of Defense has been planning a military deployment into Chicago for weeks, the Washington Post reported Saturday, one day after Trump reiterated his threat to follow up his occupation of Washington D.C. with troop movements into other US cities.
The Post reported that the Pentagon plan was “a model that could later be used in other major cities, officials familiar with the matter said.” The article continued:
The planning, which has not been previously disclosed, involves several options, including mobilizing at least a few thousand members of the National Guard as soon as September to what is the third most populous city in the United States.
On Friday, Trump blasted Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson as “grossly incompetent” and the city as “a mess.” He declared, “We’ll straighten that one out probably next. That’ll be our next one after this. And it won’t even be tough.” He added threats to New York City and San Francisco, and on Saturday he singled out Baltimore as another target for imminent military occupation.
*****
If Trump federalizes the Illinois National Guard on the pretext that violence in Chicago constitutes an insurrection against state authority, both the governor and the mayor will limit their response to lawsuits, which will take months to proceed through the courts. In the meantime, they will do nothing—the same policy carried out by Governor Gavin Newsom in California, where a federal court case is underway.
Alternatively, Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 and send in regular troops, an action that would immediately escalate the attack on democratic rights, bringing the United States to the brink of open police-military dictatorship.
*****
Despite the verbal protests from top Illinois Democrats, the national leadership of the Democratic Party has not lifted a finger to oppose Trump’s drive toward authoritarian rule. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, appearing on CNN on Sunday, said that Trump had “manufactured a crisis” and was “playing games with the lives of Americans,” but did not even hint that the US president was engaged in a step-by-step seizure of power. He declared, “We should continue to support local law enforcement.”
Rahm Emanuel, former mayor of Chicago, congressman and White House chief of staff in the Obama administration, noted to CNN that Trump, during his two terms in office, had never ordered the deployment of US troops overseas, but only into American cities. A would-be candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, Emanuel demonstrated the real concern of this party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus: that Trump has neglected the global interests of American imperialism, particularly the war in Ukraine against Russia.
9. New Caledonia’s pro-independence FLNKS rejects French-led agreement
New Caledonia’s main pro-independence organization, the Kanak and Socialist National Liberation Front (FLNKS), has formally confirmed its “block rejection” of the French-led “Bougival project.” Under the agreement, the colony’s pro- and anti-independence parties committed to a so-called “historic” deal regarding the future political status of the Pacific territory, designed to pave the way for a “state” within the French Constitution.
The talks, convened by French President Emmanuel Macron, were aimed at creating a framework to replace the 1998 “power sharing” Nouméa Accord. The 13-page Bougival document, officially entitled “Agreement Project of the Future of New Caledonia,” was signed by French Minister for Overseas Manuel Valls and all 18 delegates, including five representing the FLNKS, on July 12 after 10 days of negotiations on the outskirts of Paris.
The negotiations involved France and New Caledonia’s pro-France bloc as well as the pro-independence Kanak representatives. A major point of contention was the electoral law changes aimed at further marginalizing the indigenous Kanak population that sparked last year’s civil unrest.
The FLNKS announced its unanimous rejection of the document at an extraordinary Congress held on August 9 in Mont-Dore, near Nouméa. The FLNKS statement endorsed the “total and unambiguous rejection” of the agreement because it is “incompatible” with the right to self-determination and bears a “logic of recolonization” on the part of France.
*****
Following the FLNKS announcement, Valls flew to New Caledonia attempting to salvage the agreement, which now faces collapse. It was his fourth trip to Nouméa since taking office late 2024, in his efforts to reach a negotiated settlement following last year’s uprising by indigenous Kanaks against French colonial rule.
The seven-month rebellion was marked by widespread rioting with 14 people killed, mostly by French gendarmes, and damage estimated at €2.2 billion. Fueled by social inequality, unemployment and economic desperation, it brought alienated youth into conflict, not only with colonial oppression, but with the territory’s political establishment, including the official Kanak pro-independence parties.
Macron made clear that “Republican order” would be imposed in the most brutal fashion. Over 7,000 military and police personnel were dispatched to put down the “insurrection” and leading Kanak independence activists, including Téin, were sent to prisons in France.
*****
France’s ruling elite was not going to relinquish its grip on its strategically important colonial possession. Under the Bougival deal, calls at the heart of the uprising for full and sovereign political independence were betrayed. The agreement did not grant France’s 172 years-old colony independence, either immediately or in the future.
*****
The FLNKS, despite proclaiming “socialism” in its title, is not socialist but a petty-bourgeois nationalist organization seeking further privileges for a narrow indigenous elite. It was instrumental in establishing the Nouméa Accord which ended civil war conditions of the 1980s in return for political and business influence.
10. Famine claims lives of 289 Gazans as Israel attacks Gaza City
Gaza’s Health Ministry said Sunday that 289 people, including 115 children, have died of malnutrition and starvation since the start of the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza. The announcement comes after the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) hunger monitor officially pronounced a famine in Gaza on Friday.
“This famine is entirely man-made, and it can be halted and reversed,” the report warned. “The time for debate and hesitation has passed; starvation is present and rapidly spreading.”
According to UN figures, nearly 12,000 children under the age of five were found to have acute malnutrition in July—a figure that has only continued to surge.
*****
The Israeli genocide has officially killed at least 62,000 people—the vast majority of them civilians—and the real death toll at this point likely exceeds 100,000 people. The vast majority of Gaza’s homes, businesses, schools, and hospitals has been destroyed, and nearly its entire population has been internally displaced multiple times.
11. Tom Lehrer, satirical singer-songwriter of the 1960s, is dead at 97
The success of Tom Lehrer through the 1950s and especially the 1960s reflected the changing social climate in that period in the US as well as in Europe. Postwar prosperity had increased living standards, but the Cold War and McCarthyism had provoked fears of nuclear war, along with opposition to political repression and conservatism. At the same time a new generation was discovering a bohemian night life in places like Boston, New York and San Francisco.
*****
Lehrer’s music acquired a kind of cult status and never disappeared. A new generation was exposed to his songs by “Tomfoolery,” a revue that originated in London in 1980 and subsequently traveled to New York and other cities. The singer, who had no family, announced several years ago that he was relinquishing all rights to his songs and lyrics. They are all freely available at tomlehrersongs.com.
*****
The issues Lehrer sang about have not only not disappeared—they are more explosive than ever. But events such as the ongoing genocide in Gaza do not lend themselves to the kind of amusing treatment dispensed by Tom Lehrer. As Lehrer himself explained many years ago, “Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.” This is a comment that takes on special meaning at a time when Donald Trump demands almost every day that he be nominated for and awarded the same honor.
In a sense, Lehrer’s passing is a reminder—although none should be necessary—that the days of protest and middle class radicalism are long gone. Today, musicians like Roger Waters, Macklemore, Kneecap and Jesse Welles take a different approach, a far more serious one, as they oppose the crimes of the decaying capitalist system. Satire certainly has its place, and American conditions at present provide ample opportunity for almost endless derision, but the times call for a more devastating satire and for a movement that can put an end to the atrocities it describes.
Immigration authorities raided a warehouse last Wednesday in Edison, New Jersey, arresting 29 undocumented workers and injuring three.
Both Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) participated in the raid. At 10 a.m., about 20 masked and armed agents stormed Smart Logistics, a CBP-bonded facility that serves Amazon, UPS, and FedEx, while others blocked the exits.
Workers described chaos as people scrambled to escape. ICE deployed drones inside the cavernous building to hunt those who fled into the rafters. Witnesses said one worker was slammed to the floor and cuffed, another left bleeding, and a third was injured after falling from a stairwell.
Family members, alerted by activists, gathered outside in anguish as ICE interrogated every employee. Those with documentation were forced to wear yellow wristbands before being released from a holding area inside the warehouse.
*****
The Edison raid is part of a systematic state policy aimed at overriding constitutional protections and establishing a presidential dictatorship. ICE and CBP’s lawless behavior is central to Trump’s strategy of placing the state above the law, instilling fear, normalizing extrajudicial power, and eroding democratic rights.
This drive was codified in March 2025 in Trump’s order “Protecting American Communities from Criminal Aliens,” which baldly asserted that “Federal supremacy with respect to immigration, national security, and foreign policy is axiomatic.”
The Democrats are acting as Trump’s accomplices. Governor Phil Murphy, a billionaire “lame duck” leaving office next year, declared after a July raid that his administration “cooperates with [federal authorities] all the time.” Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mikie Sherrill has remained silent on the Edison raids. Last year she had criticized Trump’s use of Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst for detention operations—not out of concern for immigrant workers, but because it was a “blatant misuse of one of New Jersey’s most critical military assets.”
Representative Frank Pallone, whose district includes Edison, said Trump was “just trying to make a political point.” Senators Cory Booker and Andy Kim issued a joint statement calling the raids “performative theatrics” and a “shameful attempt…to distract from corruption.” California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, has stooped to childish name-calling.
*****
ICE disappeared the Edison detainees into its network of jails without informing families where their loved ones were being taken. The immigrant advocacy group Cosecha-NJ reported that some were transported to ICE’s Newark facility on Frelinghuysen Avenue, while others may be held at the Elizabeth Detention Center or Delaney Hall, where detainees rioted in June over abuse and lack of food. ICE has declined to disclose where the 29 workers will be arraigned.
Workers and activists told reporters that those detained in Edison were from Mexico, Guatemala, Ecuador, and Peru. Edison, a city of nearly 110,000, is almost half immigrant, with the majority from Asia. The raids have ripped through a community whose survival depends on low-wage immigrant labor while Amazon and logistics giants profit from Smart Logistics’ role as a supply-chain hub.
*****
Trump’s dictatorship drive is bound up with the needs of American capitalism to suppress opposition at home and prosecute imperialist war abroad. With 2,000 U.S. Marines already deployed in gunboats off the coast of Venezuela, the connection between repression of immigrants and preparations for war is plain.
The Socialist Equality Party insists that the defense of immigrant workers, the fight against dictatorship, and the struggle against imperialist war are one and the same. They require the independent mobilization of the working class, armed with a socialist and internationalist program.
The World Socialist Web Site publishes a letter sent to it by an ex-steelworker responding to the August 11 explosion at the Clairton Coke Works facility near Pittsburgh, Ohio. Two steel workers, 39-year-old Timothy Quinn and 52-year-old Steven Menefee, were killed and 10 injured.
15. This week in history: August 25-31
25 years ago:
Scientists discover potential ocean on Jupiter’s moon Europa
50 years ago:
Portuguese Prime Minister Vasco Gonçalves removed from office
75 years ago:
US President Truman places railroads under military control, blocking major strike
100 years ago:
French troops withdraw from Germany’s Ruhr region
16. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk
