Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. US debt at $40 trillion as financial crisis deepens
The rise of the US national debt to $40 trillion, announced by the Treasury yesterday, marks a new stage in the deepening economic and financial crisis of US imperialism, to which it will respond with ever increasing military measures as it seeks to counter its historic decline.
Within a day of the milestone, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was compelled to intervene in the government bond market itself, announcing Wednesday that the Treasury would double its buybacks of long-term debt after the yield on the 30-year bond reached its highest level since 2007. That the department which issues what is supposed to be the world’s safest financial asset must now step in to support the market for its own debt is a measure of how far the crisis has developed.
Every day brings new threats, new actions in the Ukraine and the Middle East, the latest being the threat to bomb Oman if it gets in the way of US operations in the Strait of Hormuz, while Washington develops its preparations for war against China. As Leon Trotsky warned nearly a century ago, the eruption of American imperialism would be expressed more openly, more violently under conditions of its decline.
The financial indices of the decline—the ultimate driving force of the unfolding global war it is prosecuting—are revealed in the escalation of US debt and the turmoil it has set off in global bond markets in recent days with yields (interest rates) on US, German, Japanese and UK bonds rising to multi-year highs.
The most revealing feature of the US debt is not just its size, significant as that is, but the speed with which it has grown. At the turn of the century, it was less than $6 trillion. In the past 10 years it has more than doubled, growing by $3 trillion in the past year alone.
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This year the US is set to borrow at least a further $2 trillion to pay for increased military spending—the Trump administration wants to lift it to $1.5 trillion—and to cover the loss of revenue flowing from the tax cuts to the wealthy and corporations in the One Big Beautiful Bill.
But at least half of this increase in debt will be needed just to cover the interest bill now running at more than $1 trillion a year, more than the current military budget. It is estimated that nearly one in five dollars of US government revenue goes to pay interest on Treasury bonds.
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With the US financial system having suffered two near-fatal heart attacks in the past 18 years—the global financial crisis of 2008 and the freeze of the US Treasury market in March 2020—another crash is set to take place sooner rather than later.
The increasingly frantic actions of Bessent certainly point in that direction.
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In his latest endeavor to quell bond market turmoil, Bessent has announced that the Treasury will increase its buybacks from the secondary Treasury market, where previously issued bonds are bought and sold, from $2 billion to $4 billion, in order to lower long-term borrowing costs.
But far from representing some solution to the deepening crisis, Bessent’s actions increasingly resemble the fabled Dutch boy rushing to plug one hole after another in the dike. But unlike the boy in the story, who saved a town, Bessent’s desperate actions are only making the situation worse.
And this forms part of a broader development, going back at least 40 years. In 1987, Fed chair Alan Greenspan intervened to guarantee liquidity after the largest single-day stock market crash on Wall Street in history.
The “Greenspan put,” as it was called, backed the explosion of financial speculation in the 1990s and early 2000s, leading to the global financial crisis of 2008.
It was further fueled by massive government bailouts and the intervention of the Fed through “quantitative easing,” supposedly to save the financial system. But the chief effect was to finance a new round of speculation, further accelerating after the March 2020 intervention. Regulations brought in to try and control the banks only led to the growth of private credit and hedge fund activity, now at the center of a new and rapidly developing crisis.
A resident doctor at a National Health Service (NHS) hospital trust in England has begun a regular diary for NHS FightBack exposing conditions in frontline care. Published since February, the diary entries on Facebook and X have been followed by thousands of NHS workers.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) launched NHS FightBack in 2013 to build rank-and-file opposition to the dismantling of the NHS. Successive Conservative and Labour governments have imposed massive cuts and privatization.
“Notes from a Resident Doctor” aims to break the wall of silence erected by the Labour government, hospital management and health union bureaucrats by exposing conditions inside the NHS: burnout, unsafe staffing levels, and substandard care that threatens patient safety.
Critically, the diary reflects a determined commitment to turning colleagues’ anger into political organization, not despair.
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The diary entries have revealed three key issues:
- Conditions inside the NHS are far worse than the official picture. Missed reviews, unsafe discharges and registrars working 72-hour shifts (on call) to evade working-time rules are the daily reality.
- The same Labour government denouncing pay restoration as “unaffordable” is pouring billions into military spending, while embedding private companies at the heart of NHS planning.
- The BMA leadership is part of the problem. It does not merely fail to fight; it suppresses struggle, collaborates with anti-immigrant legislation, and presents sellouts as victories.
The crisis is a product of capitalism, a system generating immense wealth for a tiny minority while starving public health.
The dismantling of the NHS is part of a global assault on public healthcare. The fightback must correspondingly be international. The working class in the NHS is already international; its struggle must be too.
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NHS FightBack encourages health workers to send their own frontline reports to add to the diary. Help us expose what is happening inside the health service, break the isolation staff feel in their own hospitals and departments, and help build the necessary political fightback against the Labour government’s destruction of the NHS.
Complete the NHS FightBack survey of doctors and sign up to NHS FightBack’s newsletter.
3. Türkiye: Miners in Ankara demanding what they are owed defy police repression
The struggle waged in Ankara since August 10 by workers at Eti Gümüş and Doruk Madencilik, both owned by Yıldızlar SSS Holding, over wages, severance pay and other benefits that have gone unpaid for months, is continuing in defiance of mounting state repression.
In the space of a single week, more than a hundred miners and officials of the Bağımsız Maden-İş (Independent Miners’ Union) have been subjected to four separate waves of detention. Demonstrations have been banned in the capital, the wives of workers have been taken into custody, and union officials have been threatened with arrest.
Part of the wages of the Eti Gümüş workers in Elazığ has gone unpaid since November 2024, and of the Doruk workers in Eskişehir for even longer. The bulk of the workers were placed on compulsory unpaid leave from April 2025 onwards. A report by inspectors from the Ministry of Labor established that this practice was illegal and that all wages, together with severance and notice pay, owed since 2022 must be paid. These reports did nothing to halt the theft of workers’ entitlements.
On the morning of August 10, workers employed at Eti Gümüş and Doruk Madencilik tried to make a public statement in front of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources. They were surrounded by police the moment they emerged from the metro station. More than 100 were detained, among them Gökay Çakır, general president of the rank-and-file union Bağımsız Maden-İş.
The following day, the Ankara Governor’s Office declared a 15-day ban on demonstrations across the city. The workers refused to recognise the ban. On August 13, the fourth day of the protest, 82 workers were detained along with Çakır and the union’s organising specialist, Başaran Aksu. Two miners lost consciousness due to the violent police assault and were taken to hospital. Lütfi Sabri Batı, the union’s lawyer, stated that the miners were denied access to their medication for hours.
The 82 workers were released after 48 hours. Aksu, charged with “inciting the public to hatred and enmity,” was released under judicial supervision.
The next day, the wives of the miners, who were waiting at Akköprü metro station, were detained. According to lawyer Batı, this was because the workers had announced that they would send a delegation to the rally marking the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was due to attend.
On Sunday, August 16, the holding company issued a statement on social media claiming that payments had been made and that a substantial part of its past obligations had been met. The statement asserted that Türkiye Maden-İş, affiliated to the Türk-İş confederation, is the officially recognised union, and that Bağımsız Maden-İş was misleading and provoking the public. The holding company, which has the government behind it, insisted that the workers’ protests were unlawful and called on the state to investigate “the organisation and the connections in the background of this process.”
This statement is an admission that the workers are being robbed of what they are owed through the collaboration of the company, the union bureaucracy and the Erdoğan government, and that their democratic struggle is being suppressed with police-state methods. While the workers continued their protests, Çakır and Aksu were detained once again, the day after they were singled out, and later released on judicial supervision.
Workers at all workplaces must demand an end to the repression and arbitrary detentions faced by the miners, and that the miners’ demands be met immediately.
On August 5, Jason Arday resigned as Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, after a witch-hunt set in motion by far-right forces. He told friends and colleagues that his life had been ruined and he could see no way out.
His resignation did nothing to stem the media feeding frenzy. Nine days later, he took his own life. Hundreds of stories on Arday began to be taken offline, including many of the close to 200 posted in the days following his resignation until the day of his death.
Millions were outraged at his treatment and deeply saddened by his tragic end. A vigil organized by Stand Up To Racism in Trafalgar Square, London on August 17 was attended by tens of thousands.
There have been and will be denunciations of the media and of the clearly racist underpinnings of the campaign against the youngest black professor ever appointed by Cambridge; of its sheer scale and how this belies all claims that the issue at stake was a defense of academic integrity; of the stark contrast regarding how other (proven, not alleged) allegations of plagiarism by white academics have been treated.
Many will identify this as an example of the “culture wars” launched by the right against a supposed “woke threat” to “traditional”, “western” standards and values.
But identifying a threat is not the same as combating it, which requires a clear-eyed look at Arday the individual and the politics he was associated with.
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Arday had a documented history of serious developmental difficulties and said he had been diagnosed in childhood with autism and global developmental delay; he was also reported to have dyslexia. It is also true that much of what he claimed about his life, including credentials relevant to his spectacular academic career, was outlandish and transparently false.
These provided solid grounds to oppose Arday’s appointment at Cambridge and the celebrity status he was afforded by academia and the media.
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By the time of his resignation, Arday believed he had nowhere to go. And the best efforts of his defenders did not change anything for him. A petition organised by the Good Law Project denouncing accusations of plagiarism as “entirely false” secured 10,000 signatures including Green Party leader Zack Polanski, Labour left John McDonnell and other notables. But some had already begun to withdraw, including National Education Union General Secretary Daniel Kebede.
Investigations had been announced by the University of Cambridge, Jesus College, Queen’s University Belfast and Durham University. The publication of his memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, in the United States met with scathing reviews. Meanwhile the right wing was in a state of gleeful ecstasy and continued its vendetta.
Arday died at his Battersea home on August 14, aged just 41.
The obsessive self-publicist Prime Minister Andy Burnham described his death as an occasion for “reflection', to be joined in the shedding of crocodile tears by his Education Secretary Lucy Powell and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Demands have been made for the dead-end of a public inquiry and for the media to be reined in.
All of which will have zero lasting impact.
The offensive on campuses will proceed at pace, as will the assault against migrants and asylum seekers as the spearhead of broader efforts to build a far-right movement to be mobilised against the working class, under conditions of escalating war and savage austerity measures. And Burnham’s Labour government will continue to triangulate its own anti-migrant measures against those of Reform UK while employing sympathetic noises over Arday as camouflage.
Arday’s death is a tragedy. But more and far worse is to come.
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The success of this right-wing campaign is an exposure of the politically bankrupt petty bourgeois protest politics, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and Critical Race Theory nostrums which Arday subscribed to. The right-wing offensive in universities cannot be defeated on this basis and is rather strengthened by it.
Contemporary racial prejudice and the weight of historic oppression find stark reflection in academia, especially its elite institutions like Cambridge. In 2025, just 0.4 percent of the university’s professors were black, even worse than the UK university average of roughly 1 percent. Twelve percent of Cambridge’s faculty are from ethnic minority backgrounds, versus a third of its undergraduates.
But the fight against such discrimination cannot be pursued based on a strategy of appeals to the ruling elite to provide a more equitable distribution of privilege based on ethnic criteria. University administrations use such policies for their own ends, only benefiting a narrow layer of the black and ethnic minority upper-middle class, doing nothing for the vast bulk of the [Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic] working class and creating the conditions for a right-wing offensive.
Cambridge’s role in the affair is particularly filthy. It made cynical use of Arday’s appointment to conceal its function as a bastion of social privilege. Facing criticism for its lack of staff diversity, the university leapt at his colorful biographical claims, working class background, media prominence and attractive personality. On his appointment, a university spokesperson said this would help address “the under-representation of people from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, especially those from black, Asian, and other minority ethnic communities.”
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One faction at Cambridge, taking a condescending attitude to any black (especially black working-class) academic, had no real interest in checking his credentials. To them, he was a much-needed high-profile hire. For another faction, it was simply enough that he had co-edited Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, Whiteness and Decolonising the Academy and other writings on Racism and Eurocentrism. He suited their political agenda.
The result was an appointment which put a target on the back of a clearly quite vulnerable man, out of his depth and in no position to answer his critics and political opponents.
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The essential political falsehood of Critical Race Theory is its argument that the fundamental divide in modern society is race and not class. This determines its reactionary character, serving to divide the working class in its struggles against the capitalist class. White workers are even designated as beneficiaries of a system based on 'white supremacy,' concealing the fundamental source of inequality and oppression.
The working class is blamed for systemic inequalities, rather than the private ownership of the means of production by the bourgeoisie within the capitalist mode of production.
This in turn provides the basis for a narrow layer of the black petty bourgeoisie to focus on demands for their own self-advancement within capitalism, through DEI-based initiatives which do nothing to fundamentally challenge the profit system or its praetorian guards in academia and other areas of society.
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The political right are at their happiest when any social issue is framed in racial terms and they can exploit and generate a backlash against those it can portray as seeking special privileges. That is why they have spent such effort on promoting their racial agenda on campus, to play to social grievances, especially within the upper middle class, who want to defend their own privileges from the “undeserving” leveraging race to seek their own “place in the sun”.
Nothing progressive can come from such a conflict. It is a conduit for political reaction.
5. Florida executes William Silvia as the US death machine accelerates
Florida put William Frances Silvia to death Tuesday evening at Florida State Prison near Starke, the 13th person killed by the state this year and the 23rd executed in the United States in 2026. He was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m. after receiving a three-drug lethal injection.
Silvia, 61, was already strapped to the gurney with an IV in his arm when the curtain rose at 6 p.m. He lay largely motionless, eyes and mouth open, while a priest sat at his feet and prayed. Asked for a final statement, he said, “It was an accident. I never meant to hurt her.” Several minutes after the drugs began flowing, a warden shook him and shouted his name, getting no response. A medic pronounced him dead a short time later.
Silvia was convicted and executed for a crime that took place on September 22, 2006, at his mother-in-law’s home in Seminole County. He had lost his job the day before. He had been living in his truck for weeks after separating from his wife, Patricia. That day he bought a 12-gauge shotgun and ammunition, drove to the house during a family cookout, tried and failed to reconcile, and fired seven rounds, killing Patricia, 39, and destroying his mother-in-law Betty Woodard’s face. She lost her left eye and part of her nose.
Silvia’s serious mental illness was never in dispute. Both state and defense experts agreed at trial that his chronic psychiatric disorder was genuinely mitigating. In the months before the killing he had lost his job, lost his housing and deteriorated psychologically. The jury voted 11-1 for death.
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Under Florida Statute 922.052, the governor alone signs death warrants. Once the Florida Supreme Court clerk certifies that the required appeals have concluded or expired and the clemency process has ended, the governor “shall” issue a warrant within 30 days.
The governor personally sets the execution date within a 180-day window. Clemency is also up to the governor, who may deny it at any time for any reason, while commuting a sentence requires two of the three elected cabinet officers to agree. A warrant instantly converts years of deliberate litigation into a fire drill—in Conahan’s case, all circuit proceedings closed 10 days after signing, with briefs due over a weekend.
DeSantis has used this power more than any Florida governor in the modern era. Nineteen executions in 2025 shattered the previous state record of eight. Fifteen warrants have been signed in 2026, with 13 carried out. Since January 2025 Florida has killed 32 people. The state accounts for more than half the nation’s executions this year.
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Ten more executions are scheduled before the end of the year: two in Florida, five in Texas, two in Tennessee and one in Alabama. That would bring the national total to 33 in 2026, short of last year’s 47 but higher than any year since 2014. More warrants are likely. DeSantis has signed nearly two each month this year.
6. Directors Guild and IATSE more than happy to hand Hollywood over to the oligarchs
The Directors Guild of America (DGA) and International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) have intervened in the antitrust battle over Paramount Skydance’s proposed $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, urging California Attorney General Rob Bonta to abandon the state-led legal challenge and negotiate a settlement allowing the merger to proceed. Their letter marks an escalation in the struggle over Hollywood’s future and betrayal of the workers they claim to represent.
The two entertainment unions argue that prolonged litigation creates uncertainty and that binding commitments, including separate studio operations, a 45-day theatrical window and 30 theatrical films annually, could preserve employment and competition under a single corporate parent. They are asking Bonta to turn the antitrust case into negotiations over the terms of surrender.
On the other hand, the Writers Guild of America (WGA), SAG-AFTRA (the performers’ union) and Teamsters have issued statements warning that the Paramount-Warner merger threatens employment, wages, residuals, union jobs and the diversity of content. Liberal and “left” commentators present these statements as evidence that “labor” is resisting. The latter, in fact, comprise a public relations exercise by bureaucracies whose record demonstrates class collaboration, not class struggle. They are designed to create the appearance of resistance while doing nothing to organize it.
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These organizations cannot and will not organize action across entertainment unions and build an independent political movement against the oligarchy. They will not break with the Democratic Party, in the first place, whose Telecommunications Act of 1996 dismantled ownership restrictions and helped unleash today’s concentration. They are an integral gear in the capitalist machinery.
The deal’s finances make clear what is at stake. Paramount Skydance is financing the acquisition with $54 billion to $57.5 billion in bridge loans from major banks, while Larry Ellison has guaranteed up to $45.7 billion in equity from his Oracle holdings. The combined company will carry roughly $90 billion in debt. Paramount CEO David Ellison has pledged to extract $6 billion annually in “cost synergies.”
“Cost synergies” is finance capital’s euphemism for mass layoffs. Redundancies will be targeted across the corporation: the merger of CBS News and CNN threatens cuts in journalism; integrating Max and Paramount+ threatens engineering, design and back-office jobs; theatrical marketing and global distribution will face consolidation and downsizing. Other conglomerates will necessarily follow suit with similar competitive action. Tens of thousands of jobs are at stake. DGA and IATSE officials know this and are proceeding anyway.
Their safeguards are a fig leaf. Separate studio operations can be maintained in name while common ownership coordinates investment, distribution, marketing and production decisions behind closed doors. A 45-day theatrical window can be renegotiated or circumvented once public attention fades. A promise to release 30 films says nothing about working conditions or creative freedom.
The unions are asking workers to trust David Ellison, heir to a multibillion-dollar fortune, a Trump ally and architect of a debt-laden, AI-driven corporate empire. This is a new stage in the fusion of Silicon Valley, the Pentagon and Hollywood.
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The resulting conglomerate would control CBS News and CNN, two of the three major American television news networks, alongside Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., HBO and a vast streaming, cable and publishing portfolio. Larry Ellison, a longtime Trump donor, would exercise ultimate authority over this information empire and has reportedly discussed with White House officials which CNN anchors should be fired for insufficient loyalty to the administration.
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The consequences are global. Paramount and Warner Bros. are distribution machines whose combined power will enable the conglomerate to dictate terms worldwide. Independent filmmakers, smaller production companies and dissenting artists will face greater barriers to audiences. The diversity of cinema, already under assault from algorithmic homogenization, will be further constricted.
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Artistic freedom, democratic rights and truthful reporting cannot be entrusted to billionaires, regulators or union bureaucracies tied to corporate management. They require political struggle against capitalism. The union apparatus has chosen its side. The rank and file must choose theirs.
7. Ukraine war-hawk defeated in Florida Democratic primary
In a stunning blow to the Democratic Party establishment, former lieutenant colonel Alexander Vindman, a central figure in backing the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, was defeated in Tuesday’s primary election for US Senate by black state legislator Angie Nixon, who recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America.Nixon won by a comfortable 12 percentage points, despite being heavily outraised and outspent by Vindman, who largely ignored his challenger, refused to debate her or appear alongside her at candidate forums, and stockpiled millions in financial resources for the fall campaign in which he will now not be a candidate.
Turnout for the mid-August primary was low, with fewer Democrats going to the polls in Florida than in Michigan two weeks earlier, although Florida has more than twice the population. But Nixon swept her home city of Jacksonville and the entire northern part of the state, which is more heavily African American, while winning all the state’s major urban areas, including Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando, and Tampa-St. Petersburg.
Nixon also won large majorities among young voters and minority and working class voters, with Vindman winning only in the most affluent and conservative areas, including Palm Beach County on the Atlantic Coast, and the Sarasota-Bradenton-Naples area on the Gulf Coast.
The two-term state legislator did not emphasize her affiliation with the DSA, which she joined only in June, and the DSA did not endorse her. Her campaign was focused on the high cost-of-living, a $25-an-hour national minimum wage, and Medicare for all. She also opposed US aid to Israel and condemned the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Nixon had also engaged in highly publicized opposition to the gerrymandering of Florida’s congressional districts by Governor Ron DeSantis, which eliminated two black-majority districts in south Florida and a total of four Democratic-held districts in all. She was arrested for staging a sit-in at DeSantis office and faces a trial next month.
While Nixon won narrowly in south Florida, two right-wing pro-Israel Democratic representatives retained their seats against DSA-backed opponents. Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz defeated Elijah Manley and several other candidates in a majority-minority district created after her own district was eliminated by the gerrymander.
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For her part, Nixon followed up her victory with an immediate disavowal of the platform of the DSA, telling the Morning Joe interview program on MS NOW that she opposed such slogans as “defunding police,” “abolishing prisons” and “open borders,” although she repeated her opposition to US aid to Israel.
Nixon did not make Ukraine an issue in the campaign, given that the Democratic Party is unalterably committed to support for the US-NATO war against Russia. But Vindman’s own campaign could not be separated from it.
A Ukrainian-born career US military officer who was in charge of the Ukraine desk at the White House National Security Council, Vindman played a central role in the 2019 impeachment of Donald Trump. He testified about the circumstances surrounding the phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in which Trump demanded Zelensky dig up dirt on Democrat Joe Biden. Trump briefly held up US military aid to Ukraine to put pressure on Zelensky.
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Trump himself celebrated the result of the Florida primary—in which he voted by mail—with a social media post denouncing Vindman as “a real treasonous creep” and Nixon, in openly racist terms, as “a Radical Left Lunatic, who can’t speak or think properly.” This from the president whose lunacy and “inability to speak or think properly” are so obvious—and his right-wing, militaristic policies so detested—that his approval rating has fallen to a record low of only 33 percent.
8. Meeting attendees denounce Australian government’s assault on the disabled
“The cuts will hit clients, support workers, teachers, and healthcare staff alike. It is clear this is an international offensive against the working class.” – Maureen, a former aged-care nurse.
9. New Zealand Greens candidate fought in SAS during Afghanistan war
The New Zealand Herald reported on August 15 that Josh Jacobsen, the Green Party’s candidate for the North Shore electorate in Auckland, spent years in the military and fought in Afghanistan as a lance corporal in the New Zealand Special Air Service (NZSAS).The NZSAS, the military’s special forces unit, consists of highly trained killers. It took part in the criminal US imperialist invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 and carried out numerous secret missions during the two-decade-long war that devastated the country. The unit was highly valued by Washington and received a citation from President George W. Bush in 2004.
It is estimated that more than 200,000 people died in the war, which was part of Washington’s drive to secure unchallenged control over the region and to strengthen its position against Russia, Iran and China. Faced with spiraling costs and mass resistance to the occupying forces and the US puppet regime, the Biden administration withdrew in August 2021 and handed power back to the Taliban.
The Greens’ selection of Jacobsen further exposes the fraudulent claims by the pseudo-left groups, the International Socialist Organization and Socialist Aotearoa, that it is an anti-war party. Jacobsen speaks proudly about his participation in an illegal war aimed at transforming Afghanistan into a US colony.
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How exactly did Jacobsen go from fighting in Afghanistan to joining the Greens? According to the Herald, after leaving the military he “spent time studying at a university in the United States where he met his wife,” whose name and occupation are not revealed. He then spent time in “South America and Africa” before eventually moving to Jordan.
The Herald states: “Jacobsen’s experience landed him work with the United Nations, including roles that took him inside Gaza around the time military action by Israel saw thousands killed and a humanitarian crisis that stretched into 2015 and beyond.” What Jacobsen did for the UN and what he did in Gaza is not explained.
According to Jacobsen, the Greens’ “brave” position on Palestine “tipped me from voting for the Greens to joining the Greens.” The party’s election manifesto calls for NZ to recognize the state of Palestine and impose sanctions on Israel—policies which, even if adopted, will not stop the genocide against the Palestinian people.
The party must be judged on its record. Like its Australian and German counterparts, it has consistently supported New Zealand’s role as a minor imperialist power allied to the US.
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The Greens’ promotion of Jacobsen is part of the political establishment’s efforts to overcome mass opposition to war, to encourage nationalism and to persuade young people to join the military.
New Zealand’s ruling class is actively preparing to drag the country into the rapidly expanding war for the redivision of the entire world. This unfolding global catastrophe can only be stopped by building an anti-war movement of the international working class that is independent of, and opposed to, all the capitalist parties, including the Green Party and its middle class, pseudo-left cheerleaders. Workers and young people must take up the fight for the socialist reorganization of society, to put an end to the capitalist system, which is the source of war. Those who agree with this program should contact the Socialist Equality Group.
The Israeli government is building an execution facility to hang Palestinian prisoners, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir announced Tuesday in a statement from his office. In video released from the site—a prison in central Israel that his office did not name—Ben-Gvir walks through the wing being built for condemned prisoners and says “gallows will be erected” there.
Israel has killed 73,409 people in Gaza since October 2023, by the Gaza Health Ministry’s count issued Wednesday, and South Africa has charged it before the International Court of Justice with genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza.
The killing has continued through the “ceasefire” Israel agreed to on October 10, 2025: the ministry has recorded 1,273 Palestinians killed in the ten months since, alongside the 174,335 wounded in the war overall.
The genocide is one front of the war the United States and Israel are waging across the Middle East. Israel is bombing Lebanon and Syria, and the United States is blockading Iran’s ports.
On Monday US President Donald Trump threatened to bomb Oman, the mediator between Washington and Tehran, if it “gets in the way” of ending the war with Iran.
“We are making history,” Ben-Gvir declared. “Terrorists deserve only one thing: death by hanging.” The facility, he said, will include “viewing chambers where crime victims will be able to come and watch.”
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Ben-Gvir is a follower of the fascist rabbi Meir Kahane, whose Kach party Israel banned as a terrorist organization in 1994. A Jerusalem court convicted Ben-Gvir in 2007 of racist incitement and supporting a terrorist organization, and his criminal record was estimated at 13 convictions, according to a report in Haaretz in March. In December 2022 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made him the minister in charge of Israel’s police and prisons.
The gallows will be used to enforce the “Death Penalty for Terrorists” law, which the Knesset passed 62-48 on March 30, with Netanyahu coming to the chamber to vote yes in person.
Human Rights Watch wrote March 31 that the law “aims to kill Palestinian detainees faster and with less scrutiny,” and four UN special rapporteurs called it April 2 “a grave escalation in Israel’s discriminatory oppression of Palestinians” and demanded its repeal.
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Israel has hanged one person by sentence of its civilian courts in its history: the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, in 1962. The laws Ben-Gvir is preparing to enforce would produce the next—and, by design, the first of many.
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More than 9,600 Palestinian and Arab prisoners were in Israeli jails at the start of April, according to a joint count by the Palestinian Commission of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Society and the prisoner rights group Addameer.
Israel is holding more than 1,000 Gaza Palestinians without any charge under the statute it calls the Unlawful Combatants Law, NPR reported May 30.
By the count B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights group, published in January, at least 84 Palestinians from Gaza, the West Bank and Israel itself have died behind bars since October 2023.
Its executive director, Yuli Novak, said “the Israeli regime has turned its prisons into a network of torture camps for Palestinians.”
Prisoners have spent 1,000 days in isolation, barred from contact with anyone beyond the prison walls, the Commission said Sunday, and Israel still refuses to let the Red Cross into its prisons.
11. Ahead of parliamentary elections, Kremlin intensifies crackdown on domestic dissent
With parliamentary elections scheduled for September 18-20, the Kremlin has stepped up a campaign to silence critics. On Monday, August 17, the Russian Supreme Court confirmed the barring of the Yabloko party from participating in the elections. Yabloko was the only party to run in the elections on a platform that openly rejected the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Its main candidate and deputy head, Lev Shlosberg, was arrested and sentenced to 11 years and one month in prison on charges of “discrediting” and spreading “false information” about the Russian army.
The sentencing of Shlosberg and the barring of Yabloko in the elections are a reactionary attempt to prevent even the faintest expression of opposition to the war and the deepening social crisis from finding a reflection in the upcoming elections. Prior to the crackdown on Yabloko, multiple deputies of the Stalinist Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) in the Altai region and in the Leningrad region were charged and jailed for days, with the transparent aim of preventing them from participating in the elections.
But the defense of the democratic rights of Yabloko does not by any means signify endorsement of its program. Contrary to what the pro-NATO media such as the New York Times claim, Yabloko is not an anti-war party but rather a party aligned with NATO. The party’s “peace program” amounts to a call for the surrender by Russia before the demands of the imperialist powers, which have provoked the war in Ukraine to use it as a launching pad for the carve-up of the entire region.
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Well aware that military catastrophes and open conflicts within the ruling class in Russia have, historically, served as catalysts for revolution—in 1905 and then in 1917—the Kremlin is deeply concerned that the conflicts within the ruling class are fought out too openly. Above all, however, it fears the development of a movement within the working class.
Vicious as the conflicts within the ruling class are, the primary aim of the anti-democratic crackdown is to intimidate and stifle growing opposition to the war within the working class. In December last year, a Russian court handed out far more severe sentences of between 16 and 22 years to members of a Marxist circle in high-security penal colonies. They were accused of having plotted to “overthrow the Russian government.” Among the key evidence cited were the volumes of Marx and Lenin that they read and debated.
More than half a year later, the political and social situation has become far more tense. Hundreds of Ukrainian drones hit Russian cities on a daily basis, with several hundred civilians killed in the past couple of months. The NATO-Ukraine drone campaign on Russian territory has targeted energy and economic infrastructure, leading to a severe fuel crisis in a country that belongs to the largest oil and gas exporters in the world. The fuel crisis, in turn, has necessitated imports and driven up prices not only for gasoline but also daily necessities and food. There is also immense discontent with the rolling internet shutdowns and growing internet censorship, which have cut off millions from family and friends outside of Russia and significantly impacted daily life.
Both the socio-economic and the human costs of the war are overwhelmingly borne by the working class. While it is impossible to obtain reliable figures, the DC-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimated that 1.4 million Russian soldiers were killed or maimed in the conflict so far.
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Depending on the region, men and women who sign a contract with the army can get what are very large sums of money as bonuses. In St. Petersburg, the regional authorities pay the highest bonus of 4.5 million rubles (around $52,924.90) upon signing. In other regions, this bonus can be significantly lower. However, in a country where the average gross monthly salary is 100,000 rubles, with many earning significantly less, these sums still make a huge difference for working class families. Although the recruiter did not spell it out, for many, the choice to join the army is a sign, above all, of social despair.
12. David North answers questions at the international Trotsky commemoration in Prinkipo
The Chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and current National Chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US), David North, answered questions on the fate of Ernst Thälmann, the Kronstadt uprising, the situation confronting workers in the Middle East and the strength of the Left Opposition inside the Soviet Union.
13. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
"Peace for the world! Down with war!"
