We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here. |
| World Federation of Trade Unions |
We Support Dockworkers Blocking Weapons on October 30, 2026
Unions representing workers at 40 ports in Europe and the Mediterranean are calling for an international day of action on October 30. Read more here.
Statement from the World Federation of Trade Unions:
Ports For Peace – Jobs With Dignity
Following the Third International Meeting of Mediterranean and European Dockworkers’ and Port Workers’ Unions, held in Istanbul in May 2026, the participating unions have launched a common international day of action on 30 October 2026.
The meeting focused on the struggle against wars, genocide and military aggression, while also addressing the challenges facing dockworkers and port workers, including wages, working conditions, automation projects, and occupational health and safety.
The participating organizations, CGT Ports and Docks (France), ENEDEP (Greece), LAB (Basque Country), Liman-İş (Turkey), ODT (Morocco), and USB (Italy), representing workers in more than 40 Mediterranean and European ports, are calling on dockworkers and port workers to mobilize together on 30 October 2026.
This mobilization is based on the Istanbul Declaration, adopted unanimously by the participating organizations and now fully endorsed by ORSA Porti of Gioia Tauro (Italy), which has joined our international network.
The declaration sets out the following demands:
· An immediate end to the genocide of the Palestinian people and recognition of an independent Palestinian state, recognized by the international community, within the 1967 borders and with East Jerusalem as its capital.
· An end to the US-Israeli wars of aggression in the West Asia and against Iran, and full solidarity with the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela and Sudan, alongside support for the right of all peoples to resist occupation and to self-determination.
· Ports must not be used for the transport of arms, ammunition, military equipment or troops destined for war zones.
· They must not become military bases for NATO, the United States or the European Union, nor serve as tools for shipowners and monopoly groups.
· No to the war economy, government rearmament plans, and the project of militarization of ports and strategic infrastructure from EU. Public resources must be used to meet people’s social needs, not to finance war.
· Collective agreements must guarantee real wage increases, secure employment, reduced working hours, and fair pension provisions.
· Technological progress, mechanization, automation and artificial intelligence must not be used to eliminate jobs or undermine workers’ rights. Dockworkers and port workers say NO to automation.
On October 30, all actions will be united as part of a common international struggle to stop wars, genocide and the militarization of ports at a very critical moment in history, while defending workers’ rights and better working conditions. Each union will decide the most appropriate form of mobilization according to its national circumstances, starting from strike action and from a shared commitment to prevent the loading of death and destruction.
The signatory trade unions of the Istanbul Declaration call on ALL dockworkers’ and port workers’ unions to join this international mobilization. We are ready to meet with organized groups of dockworkers and port workers from any other ports interested in becoming part of this common struggle.
CGT FNPD France – ENEDEP Greece – LAB Basque Country – LIMAN-IS Turkey – ODT Maroc – ORSA Porti Italy – USB Italy
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NOVEMBER 1-7
WEEK of GLOBAL RESISTANCE
to STOP U.S. IMPERIALISM & GENOCIDE
This year SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE (SDDW) Fall Actions will be a "Kick Off for A New Campaign": We want to help build a stronger network of global communities working in coordination to STOP U.S Imperialism & Genocide. Several other national organizations are already co-sponsors. (see below) This global call to action in the fall is only the beginning. We invite national and international organizations to sign on as sponsors/endorsers of the week and to plan simultaneous actions at U.S. Bases, Weapons Industries and AI Data Centers around the world. Organize actions for one day, or numerous days during or near the Week of Global Resistance. We recommend planning actions during weekday commute hours, if possible, when personnel are going into and out of military bases, weapons industry workplaces, AI Data Centers, etc. Educate, educate, educate and encourage resistance from within. Please spread the word: Help us get more sponsors & endorsers! More details to come soon.
"Week of Global Resistance" Co-sponsors: ShutDownDroneWarfare.org, BanKillerDrones.org, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, and Witness Against Empire.
Will your organization sponsor or endorse? Please contact: toby4peace@sonic.net
The above global call to action is part of SDDW Fall Action Week:
SHUT DOWN DRONE WARFARE! (SDDW)
ShutDownDroneWarfare.org
SDDW Fall Action Week:
NEW: Simultaneous Actions at both Creech AFB & Holloman AFB!
November 1-7, 2026
Nov.1-7, Creech AFB Fall Action, Indian Springs, NV
Nov. 4-6, Holloman AFB Fall Action, Alamogordo, NM
17 years of persistent resistance! Come for all or part of Fall Actions!
Shut Down Drone Warfare (SDDW) Campaign is Co-Sponsored by Veterans For Peace, Ban Killer Drones & CODEPINK
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To Iran’s Political Prisoners, trapped “Between Two Blades of a Scissors”
Open letter
August marks the anniversary of the 1988 mass executions in Iran, a horror that echoes in the country’s current surge in death sentences. It also marks the August 19 anniversary of the UK- and U.S.-orchestrated coup against the prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Amid the current, indiscriminate waves of U.S.-Israeli military assaults against Iran, this letter of solidarity denounces the repression of the Iranian people and their political prisoners by forces both at home and abroad.
To our fellow activists, students, thinkers, workers, artists, and other prisoners of conscience held behind the walls of all detention centers across Iran:
We write to you from a place of deep solidarity, our hearts heavy with the knowledge of the struggle you face within Iran’s prisons: the torture, the systematic neglect, the enforced silence, and the brutal reality of sham trials and executions. As former and current political prisoners, activists, and scholars committed to the global project of abolition, anti-authoritarianism and anti-imperialism, we see you across the distances of geography and the silence of censorship and internet blackouts. And we stand in solidarity with you, as you are at the intersection of two sources of oppression.
On one side, you face the Islamic Republic that, from its inception, enforced absolute social and political control based on an exclusionary ideology. It is a system that claims to counter imperial power while using its very logic of domination and systems of carcerality, torture and execution. On the other side, you face the aggression and violence of the very imperialist and Zionist forces the Islamic Republic purports to stand against. The U.S. and Israel instigate brutal wars, destroy civilian infrastructure, kill innocent schoolgirls, and treat you as collateral damage in their pursuit of regional dominance. We remember the horror of June 23, 2025, when Israel struck the Evin prison complex, flattening its hospital ward, transgender section, and visitor center. You best exposed this dual oppression when you voiced that you “feel stuck between the two blades of a scissors, the evil regime that imprisons and tortures [you] and a foreign force dropping bombs on [your] heads in the name of freedom.”
In the past year, we witnessed both blades of the scissor sharpen. We see the arbitrary arrests and the horrific wave of state executions. We see the deepening criminalization of the working class and unemployed, the targeting of Kurds, Arabs, and Baloch, and the scapegoating of Afghan migrants: all desperate attempts to kill the spirit of people they cannot contain. This is the logic of carceral states everywhere: when they fail to address the crises people face, they simply attempt to criminalize or disappear the people themselves.
We see the same logic of domination when Israel uses “administrative detention” to hold Palestinian political prisoners for years without charge. We see it when Israeli authorities celebrate a new law that allows them to execute the Palestinian political prisoners they cannot dominate. We see it in the ICE detention centers where the U.S. government imprisons our people in the pursuit of a political agenda of racist exclusion or detains our political activists for daring to speak against the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide. We see it in the history of the U.S. targeting freedom fighters, particularly Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican and other anticolonial organizers, locking them away for decades to crush movements for national liberation and sovereignty. And we see the connections between these carceral systems sharing intelligence and governance techniques, such as when the USP Marion prison in Illinois became a blueprint for prisons built in Iran and Israel in the 1960s. Whether it is a border wall or a prison gate, the goal is the same: to silence people through fear, domination, and isolation.
Your struggle is as global as our collective dreams of freedom and dignity. We stand with you, and we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism. We invite global civil society and anti-imperialist activists and organizations to extend their unconditional support and solidarity to all incarcerated kin fighting for our collective liberation, to build relationships with Iranian political prisoners and uplift their voices, to put pressure on the Islamic Republic by challenging its narrative, and to call upon that government to immediately stop all the executions and free all political prisoners.
The Iranian authorities must stop their inhumane practice of death and incarceration now. And the U.S. and Israel must end their barbaric wars and brutal sanctions that knowingly devastate our communities.
In solidarity and with love,
Alberto Toscano, emeritus professor of critical theory, Goldsmiths, *University of London
Angela Davis, former political prisoner, distinguished professor emerita, *University of California, Santa Cruz
Bernardine Dohrn, retired professor of law, *Northwestern University
Bill Ayers, professor, *College Unbound
Cherríe L Moraga, distinguished professor emerita, University of California, Santa Barbara, Chicana feminist writer, and activist
Dan Berger, professor of comparative ethnic studies, *University of Washington Bothell
Hossam el-Hamalawy, Egyptian socialist, scholar and former political prisoner
Jairus Banaji, historian, research professor, SOAS, *University of London
Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy, *University of Toronto
Judith Butler, distinguished professor in the Graduate School, *University of California, Berkeley
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, author, From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Michael Löwy, emeritus research director of sociology at the* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris
Michael Mansfield, human rights and civil liberties Bbarrister
Mumia Abu-Jamal, current political prisoner, educator, journalist and activist
Ricardo Jiménez, social activist, former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American studies, *Princeton University
Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Graduate Center, *CUNY
Walden F Bello, international adjunct professor of sociology, *State University of New York at Binghamton
Yasin al-Haj Saleh, Syrian writer, political dissident, and former political prisoner in Syria
* Organizations for identification purposes only
** Signatories are sorted alphabetically
—The Guardian, August 20, 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/ng-interactive/2026/aug/20/iran-political-prisoners
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The Trump administration is escalating its attack on Cuba, cutting off the island’s access to oil in a deliberate attempt to induce famine and mass suffering. This is collective punishment, plain and simple.
In response, we’re releasing a public Call to Conscience, already signed by influential public figures, elected officials, artists, and organizations—including 22 members of the New York City Council, Kal Penn, Mark Ruffalo, Susan Sarandon, Alice Walker, 50501, Movement for Black Lives, The People’s Forum, IFCO Pastors for Peace, ANSWER Coalition, and many others—demanding an end to this brutal policy.
The letter is open for everyone to sign. Add your name today. Cutting off energy to an island nation is not policy—it is a tactic of starvation.
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VIDEO:
What Cubans Really Think About Trump
By Jeff Seal, May 28, 2026
Mr. Seal is a comedian and a visual journalist.
End Texas Torture of Revolutionary Elder Xinachtli
Organization Support Letter
Letter to demand the immediate medical treatment and release of Chicano political prisoner Xinachtli (Alvaro Hernandez #00255735)
To the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
We, the undersigned organizations, write to urge immediate action to protect the life, health, and human rights of Xinachtli (legal name Alvaro Hernandez). Xinachtli is 73-year-old Chicano community organizer from Texas who has spent 23 years in solitary confinement and 30 years incarcerated as part of a 50-year sentence. His health is now in a critical and life-threatening state and requires prompt and comprehensive medical intervention.
Since his conviction in 1997, Xinachtli has spent decades in conditions that have caused significant physical and psychological harm. As an elder in worsening health, these conditions have effectively become a de facto death sentence.
Xinachtli’s current medical condition is severe. His physical, mental, and overall well-being have declined rapidly in recent weeks. He now requires both a wheelchair and a walker, has experienced multiple falls, and is suffering from rapid weight loss. He is currently housed in the McConnell Unit infirmary, where he is receiving only palliative measures and is being denied a medical diagnosis, access to his medical records, and adequate diagnostic testing or treatment.
A virtual clinical visit with licensed medical doctor Dr. Dona Kim Murphey underscores the severity of his condition. In her report of the visit, she wrote: "Given the history of recent neck/back trauma and recurrent urinary tract infections with numbness, weakness, and bowel and bladder incontinence, I am concerned about nerve root or spinal cord injury and/or abscesses that can lead to permanent sensorimotor dysfunction."
Despite his age and visible disabilities, he remains in solitary confinement under the Security Threat Group designation as a 73-year-old. During his time in the infirmary, prison staff threw away all of his belongings and “lost” his commissary card, leaving him completely without basic necessities. He is experiencing hunger, and the lack of consistent nutrition is worsening his medical condition. McConnell Unit staff have also consistently given him incorrect forms, including forms for medical records and medical visitation, creating further barriers to care and communication.
A family visit on November 29 confirmed the seriousness of his condition. Xinachtli, who was once able to walk on his own, can no longer stand without assistance. He struggled to breathe, has lost more than 30 pounds, relied heavily on his wheelchair, and was in severe pain throughout the visit.
In light of these conditions, we, the undersigned organizations, demand that TDCJ take immediate action to save Xinachtli’s life and comply with its legal and ethical obligations.
We urge the immediate implementation of the following actions:
Immediate re-instatement of his access to commissary to buy hygiene, food, and other critical items. Immediate transfer to the TDCJ hospital in Galveston for a full medical evaluation and treatment, including complete access to his medical records and full transparency regarding all procedures. Transfer to a geriatric and medical unit that is fully accessible under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Xinachtli requests placement at the Richard P LeBlanc Unit in Beaumont, Texas. Approval of Medical Recommended Intensive Supervision, the release program for individuals with serious medical conditions and disabilities, in recognition of the severity and progression of his current health issues. Failure to act will result in the continued and foreseeable deterioration of Xinachtli’s health, amounting to state-sanctioned death. We urge TDCJ to take swift and decisive action to meet these requests and to fulfill its responsibility to safeguard his life and well-being.
We stand united in calling for immediate and decisive action. Xinachtli’s life depends on it.
Signed, Xinachtli Freedom Campaign and supporting organizations
Endorsing Organizations:
Al-Awda Houston; All African People’s Revolutionary Party; Anakbayan Houston; Anti-Imperialist Solidarity; Artists for Black Lives' Equality; Black Alliance for Peace - Solidarity Network; Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society; Community Liberation Programs; Community Powered ATX; Contra Gentrificación; Diaspora Pa’lante Collective; Down South; DSA Emerge; Entre nos kc; Fighting Racism Workshops; Frontera Water Protectors; GC Harm Reductionists; JERICHO MOVEMENT; Jericho Movement Providence; Montrose Anarchist Collective; NYC Jericho Movement; OC Focus; Palestine Solidarity TX; Partisan Defense Committee; Partido Nacional de la Raza Unida; PDX Anti-Repression; Red Star Texas; Root Cause; San Francisco Solidarity Collective; Shine White Support Team; Sunrise Columbia; UC San Diego Faculty for Justice in Palestine; Viva Palestina, EPTX; Water Justice and Technology Studio; Workshops4Gaza.
Sign the endorsement letter for your organization here:
https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/MiR1f+iLiRBJC7gSTyfhyxJoLIDhThxRafPatxdbMWI/
IMPORTANT LINKS TO MATERIALS FOR XINACHTLI FREEDOM CAMPAIGN:
PHONE BLAST: Your community can sign up for a 15-minute-long call shift here: bit.ly/xphoneblast
FUNDRAISER: Here is the link to Jericho's fundraiser for Xinachtli: http://givebutter.com/jerichomovement
CASE HISTORY: Learn more about Xinachtli and his case through our website: https://freealvaro.net
CONTACT INFO:
Follow us on Instagram: @freexinachtlinow
Email us:
xinachtlifreedomcampaign@protonmail.com
COALITION FOLDER:
https://drive.proton.me/urls/SP3KTC1RK4#KARGiPQVYIvR
In the folder you will find: Two pictures of Xinachtli from 2024; The latest updated graphics for the phone blast; The original TRO emergency motion filing; Maria Salazar's declaration; Dr. Murphy's report from her Dec. 9 medical visit; Letter from Amnesty International declaring Xinachtli's situation a human rights violation; Free Xinachtli zine (which gives background on him and his case); and The most recent press release detailing who Xinachtli is as well as his medical situation.
Write to:
Alvaro Hernandez CID #00255735
TDCJ-W.G. McConnell Unit
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400
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 Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity CampaignAn appeal for financial supportMay 12, 2026 Dear Friends of the Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Campaign, It has been more than two years since Boris Kagarlitsky began serving the five-year sentence meted out to him by a Russian military court as a way of silencing and punishing him for his opposition to Putin’s war on Ukraine. With a multitude of longstanding friends and colleagues throughout the world, Boris is one of the best-known victims of the steadily escalating political repression in Russia. He has borne the gross injustice of his incarceration with characteristic courage, determination and defiance. But there is no denying that Putin’s gulag takes a toll on even the most valiant spirits. The Boris Kagarlitsky Solidarity Campaign has worked continuously these last two years to draw attention to Boris’s plight, and by extension to that of other prisoners unjustly condemned for protesting the ongoing war that has already cost upwards of half a million lives and vastly more maimed, according to estimates. We have sought, through a variety of activities, to bring pressure to bear on the Russian authorities to free Boris. The many people involved in the Campaign are happy to volunteer their time. However, we rely on the generosity of the Campaign’s supporters to cover the periodic expenses we incur. We recently reached out for help to defray costs associated with the participation of Boris’ daughter and tireless advocate for Russian political prisoners, Kseniia Kagarlitskya, in the international antifascist conference in Porto Alegre at the end of March. That trip was a great success. It allowed Kseniia and Mikhail Lobanov, Russian mathematician, political activist, and former associate professor at Moscow State University, to introduce the thousands of conference-goers from Brazil and across the world to the grim realities confronting Russian political dissidents. The Boris Kagarlitsky International Solidarity Committee has many plans in store for the coming months and especially the fall, including a virtual conference devoted to the global manifestations of political repression. We are appealing to you for a little financial help to carry out our projects and support the day-to-day ongoing work of the committee. We would be deeply appreciative of any assistance you can provide. Because the members of the Campaign coordinating committee are scattered across Europe, North America and beyond, it has been a little complicated to set up a campaign bank account, although we are making progress on that front. For the time being we are asking that you send any contributions you can manage directly to our de facto treasurer Suzi Weissman who is located in Los Angeles, California. The details of her account are: Bank: Wells Fargo Swift/Bic: PNBPUS6L Account holder: Susan Claudia Weissman Account number: 0657205076 International wire transfers: WFBIUS6S wise.com personal account: @susanclaudiaw We thank you in anticipation of any contribution you can make to help keep the Campaign running. Yours in solidarity, Dick Nichols Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries. Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin: “To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?” Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine. A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism. To sign the online petition at freeboris.info —Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024 https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine. Petition in Support of Boris KagarlitskyWe, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison. Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles. The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested. On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release. The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison. The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences. There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering. Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course. We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally. We also call on the auth *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* *..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........* |
Self-portrait by Kevin Cooper
Funds for Kevin Cooper
Kevin was transferred out of San Quentin and is now at a healthcare facility in Stockton. He has received some long overdue healthcare. The art program is very different from the one at San Quentin but we are hopeful that Kevin can get back to painting soon.
For 41 years, an innocent man has been on death row in California.
Kevin Cooper was wrongfully convicted of the brutal 1983 murders of the Ryen family and houseguest. The case has a long history of police and prosecutorial misconduct, evidence tampering, and numerous constitutional violations including many incidences of the prosecution withholding evidence of innocence from the defense. You can learn more here .
In December 2018 Gov. Brown ordered limited DNA testing and in February 2019, Gov. Newsom ordered additional DNA testing. Meanwhile, Kevin remains on Death Row at San Quentin Prison.
The funds raised will be used to help Kevin purchase art supplies for his paintings . Additionally, being in prison is expensive, and this money would help Kevin pay for stamps, books, paper, toiletries, supplies, supplementary food, printing materials to educate the public about his case and/or video calls.
Please help ease the daily struggle of an innocent man on death row!
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
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Dr. Alter Still Needs Our Help!
Please sign the petition today!
https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
What you can do to support:
—Donate to help Tom Alter and his family with living and legal expenses: https://gofund.me/27c72f26d
—Sign and share this petition demanding Tom Alter be given his job back: https://www.change.org/p/texas-state-university-give-tom-alter-his-job-back
—Write to and call the President and Provost at Texas State University demanding that Tom Alter be given his job back:
President Kelly Damphousse: president@txstate.edu
President’s Office Phone: 512-245-2121
Provost Pranesh Aswath: xrk25@txstate.edu
Provost Office Phone: 512-245-2205
For more information about the reason for the firing of Dr. Tom Alter, read:
"Fired for Advocating Socialism: Professor Tom Alter Speaks Out"
Ashley Smith Interviews Dr. Tom Alter
—CounterPunch, September 24, 2025
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Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
He still needs more complicated treatment from a retinal specialist for his right eye if his eyesight is to be saved:
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical
Defense Fund
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
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Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
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Articles
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1) U.S. Military Sinks Boats Said to Aid Drug Smuggling Near Ecuador
Unlike dozens of similar strikes, no one was killed after people suspected of drug smuggling were removed from what the U.S. military described as a floating refueling station.
By John Ismay, Sept. 5, 2026
John Ismay, who covers the Pentagon, reported from Washington.
Fishermen made their way to the ocean along Ecuador’s coast, in June. Karen Toro/Reuters
U.S. forces operating near Ecuador on Saturday intercepted and destroyed several commercial vessels believed to be used for refueling boats smuggling drugs to the United States.
It was the fourth interdiction of vessels used as floating refueling platforms in the eastern Pacific, according to a U.S. official, who said no one on either side was hurt or killed.
The mission was carried out as part of U.S. Southern Command’s efforts to hinder narcotics smugglers in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, a campaign that began just over a year ago.
A video posted to social media by the command, which directs military operations in Central and South America, shows a U.S. military vessel, an 11-meter rigid-hull inflatable boat, approach what appears to be a larger civilian craft with fuel jugs lining a raised open deck. A Marine Corps helicopter hovered off the vessel’s starboard side.
The video shows the inflatable boat moving out of the frame, then shows the larger vessel’s bow erupting in an explosion.
People aboard the refueling vessel were transferred to the custody of Ecuadorean government officials, who were nearby as part of the operation, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the mission.
The operation was supported by sailors and Marines aboard the amphibious ship U.S.S. San Antonio, which launched helicopters that fired munitions into other accompanying vessels and sank them, the official said.
Southern Command, which is based in South Florida, said the refueling operation was run by Los Choneros, which the State Department designated as a “foreign terrorist organization” just days after the campaign against suspected smuggling vessels began on Sept. 2, 2025.
In that time, the U.S. military has launched 68 attacks on what it said were drug smuggling vessels in the region, killing 227 people, according to a New York Times analysis.
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2) How a Memphis Gambling Raid Became a Sweeping Immigration Operation
More than 120 people were arrested at a Memphis cantina, in one of the biggest immigration operations in Tennessee this year.
By Eduardo Medina and Emily Cochrane, Sept. 6, 2026
Eduardo Medina reported from Memphis, and Emily Cochrane from Nashville.
In May, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation asked Immigration and Customs Enforcement for help identifying an undocumented man it suspected was involved in criminal activity at El Corralón, court records show. Brad J. Vest for The New York Times
For the people dressed up in sparkly skirts and cowboy boots, Saturday nights were best spent at El Corralón.
The cantina, tucked in the middle of Berclair, a heavily Hispanic neighborhood in Memphis, Tenn., was a rowdy joint where the mix of regional Mexican music and bachata was loud, the pool tables plenty and beer cheap enough. Gambling machines jangled by the wall.
Then, in recent weeks, neighbors started spotting drones overhead. Suspicious vans parked by the dumpsters. Unfamiliar patrons came in and left quickly. Some in the neighborhood believed the gambling machines, illegal in Tennessee, might make the business a target.
But the cantina remained open. Last Sunday, a crush of agents raided El Corralón, searching for the owner, Marco Sabillon-Urbina, an immigrant from Honduras, but detaining anyone who was in the country illegally.
In the end, the operation targeting illegal gambling and drugs spiraled into one of Tennessee’s largest sweeps of undocumented immigrants this year, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement escalates its operations across the country. More than 120 people were detained, inflaming tensions in Memphis, where many residents were already on edge over a separate federal anti-crime task force that, among other things, has also targeted immigrants.
“This takes them back to being afraid and not wanting to go out again,” said Jose Salazar, a community organizer who assists the immigrant community in Memphis. “All those fears and concerns are worse now.”
Arrests by ICE surged across the country this summer as the Trump administration pulled back from highly visible raids in Minneapolis and other cities earlier this year. The agency has carried out lower-profile operations, including targeting predominantly immigrant neighborhoods like Berclair last weekend.
Tennessee and other Republican-led states have also deepened coordination with the Trump administration and immigration authorities. In May, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation asked ICE for help identifying an undocumented man it suspected was involved in criminal activity at El Corralón, court records show.
The man, Mr. Sabillon-Urbina, first arrived in the United States in 1994 and received Temporary Protected Status in 1999; that status lapsed in January 2020 after he failed to renew the paperwork, federal law enforcement said in court records.
He was sent back to Honduras in 2023 as part of a federal plea agreement in connection with possession of drugs and a firearm. He was deported again in 2024 after trying to re-enter the United States.
Immigration and state agents executed two search warrants last weekend for the bar, related to drugs and illegal gambling. Mr. Sabillon-Urbina was named in one of the sealed warrants, photographs of which were reviewed by The New York Times. A lawyer for Mr. Sabillon-Urbina, who was detained on Sunday, did not return multiple requests for comment.
Mr. Sabillon-Urbina ran the bar with his wife, who was also detained, according to a former employee and neighbors in touch with their children. She could not be reached for comment.
Several residents said Mr. Sabillon-Urbina should have tried to be more careful.
“He could have said: You know what, close this up because they’re going to be investigating me and they may take a lot more people in the process,” Mery Sandra Rodriguez, who knows the Sabillon-Urbina family, said in Spanish.
El Corralón, which some residents described as seedy, had experienced trouble before. In 2019, a security guard was shot after breaking up a fight between two men, according to the police.
Still, on most nights, neighbors said, it was just a nearby place to dance and drink. Many had been scared of venturing far for a night out and risking being stopped and detained by the authorities.
“Sadly, because this place irresponsibly had illegal machines, the consequence of that is that our neighbors have been taken,” said Sandra Pita, a lead community organizer with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. “These were mothers, fathers, sons who had nothing to do with the problems of this business.”
Before the raid began, it was a typically busy Saturday night, according to two people who were there. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared drawing more attention from law enforcement.
Inside it smelled of perfume, spilled fruity drinks, a faint whiff of body odor near the dance floor, they said. The D.J. sprinkled in some reggaeton. There were people in high-heels, cowboy boots and tucked-in button-downs.
Then, around 1 a.m. Sunday, more than a dozen agents walked in. They spread out across the cantina, some toward the D.J. booth to turn off the music, others toward the bar and gambling machines, telling people to stay calm.
People inside screamed, according to the people who witnessed the incident. One person scrambled to hide under a billiards table; another tried to hide behind large speakers. Agents told people to gather on the dance floor, where they asked if they were legally in the country one at a time. One man who appeared to be intoxicated cursed at the agents. Another repeated the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. A woman begged them not to take her because she had small children.
A person who tried to record the scene was stopped by agents, the witnesses said.
Those who were undocumented — including bartenders, servers and some who were designated drivers that night — were zip-tied, taken out a side door and placed on buses or vans that would transport them to an ICE detention facility in Mason, Tenn.
A spokesman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said agents had seized “narcotics and evidence of illegal gambling” but declined to say more, citing an ongoing investigation.
“This criminal enforcement operation to arrest illegal aliens and eliminate drug activity in our community is part of the highest priorities of this administration,” said Scott Ladwig, the acting director of the New Orleans ICE office, in a statement released by the Department of Homeland Security.
ICE did not respond to additional questions about the operation or the people detained.
In the news release, D.H.S. singled out the criminal histories of five people detained, including arrests for larceny and drug possession. It has not provided more information on the other detainees.
Mayor Paul Young of Memphis, a Democrat, said in a statement that Memphis Police officers were not part of the operation and were called to the bar only after people had begun to gather outside.
Several relatives of people were who detained said they were angry at both ICE and Mr. Sabillon-Urbina. They said the bar owner had risked the lives of the very immigrants his business catered to.
Sofia, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras in her 20s who asked to be identified by only her first name because of her status, said her mother was detained that night and could soon be deported. She was saddened to see comments on Facebook criticizing people like her mother who had risked going out.
Her 8-year-old brother believes their mother is out on a work trip. But soon, Sofia said, she will have to tell him what really happened.
Hamed Aleaziz and Christina Morales contributed reporting. Seamus Hughes and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
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3) It’s Not Just the West Bank Settlers. It’s Israel.
By Mairav Zonszein, Sept. 6, 2026
Ms. Zonszein, a contributing Opinion writer, wrote from Tel Aviv.
Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Of all the fronts on which Israel is exerting force, the West Bank is where the Jewish state is the most invested, exerts the most control and has received the least American pushback. It is also where over half a million Israeli citizens live among some three million Palestinians who are under military occupation without citizenship. President Trump has not put any brakes on Israeli settlement expansion, creeping annexation, military raids, demolitions of Palestinian homes or settler attacks — all of which have reached record numbers under the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The West Bank is far more strategically and ideologically vital to Israel than any war it is fighting, and it is the area in which Israel has the most longstanding, coherent and unchallenged goal: as much land for Jews with as few Palestinians as possible. The West Bank is also the only arena in which Jewish settler militia groups are operating like a paramilitary force to advance Israel’s goals.
These militias are not rogue entities, as Israeli leaders have proclaimed. They are organized groups of civilians made up of a combination of Israeli settlers who establish new settlement outposts across the West Bank, settlers who were called up for reserve duty since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, and serve in regional defense units, and rapid response squads, which are local volunteer emergency teams tasked with providing first response in their settlements. Imagine a neighborhood watch, but with military-grade weapons and the use of deadly force. In June, a United Nations report found that “financial and military support” from Israeli authorities had “enabled settler attacks.”
On Aug. 9, one such militia began to terrorize three Palestinian families in the village of Qusra. They set up a tent outside their home, cutting off access to electricity and water and stymying their freedom of movement.
In this case, one of the homes is owned by Loui Ridi, a Palestinian with American citizenship from Ohio. He traveled back to Qusra, putting up an American flag on the roof of his house. Israeli forces had declared the area a “closed military zone” and removed the tent settlers had erected, but did not restore the Palestinian residents’ ability to move in and out freely. Settlers still roamed around, in violation of the order, while the Israeli Army effectively replaced the settlers in surrounding the homes.
“Actions by those who carried out this horrific act of terror meant to intimidate and harass this family are disgusting,” the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, said in a statement on X. Mr. Netanyahu and President Isaac Herzog have also condemned these attacks. But the settler militias terrorizing Qusra and other villages across the West Bank could not continue to act as they are without state and military cover. These are not isolated extremists or hooligans, as Mr. Huckabee, Mr. Netanyahu and other leaders have said.
Nor is this simply settler violence. In the West Bank, Palestinians live in daily fear for their lives. Mr. Ridi is not the only homeowner at risk. Even as the U.S. flag waved over his home, there was another settler attack against a different Palestinian home in Qusra on Aug. 29. Israeli settlers arrived in white pickup trucks, their faces masked, throwing stones. Despite a statement by Mr. Netanyahu condemning the act and assuring that authorities would take action, there has been only one reported arrest related to the attacks in Qusra and a handful of arrests related to other settler-based violence in the area. These moves may not result in much: Even when arrests are made, only 3 percent of settlers are convicted.
In other words, what’s happened in Qusra is a feature, not a bug, of Israeli policy, which has expanded and deepened its control over the occupied territory over the last four years. This has been accomplished through intensifying economic strangulation, restrictions on freedom of movement, transferring governing powers from military to civilian control and, most egregiously, the emboldening of settler militias. Such groups already existed when the current government was formed in late 2022. But in the past three years, these militias have been largely given free rein to intimidate, harass and make Palestinian life in the West Bank unbearable. Since 2023, thousands of Palestinians have been displaced by a combination of settler attacks, military operations and restrictions on access and movement. On Sept. 2, Israeli forces demolished homes and structures in the Palestinian village of Khirbet al Tabban in the southern West Bank, rendering the village’s 70 residents homeless.
The Hamas attack on Oct. 7, the deadliest single attack on Israelis in the country’s history, accelerated the use of violence in general, and settler militias in particular, under the most pro-settler, far-right government in Israeli history. Under this government, Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, has expedited the destruction of Palestinian homes while streamlining the building of Israeli ones, whereas Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, has distributed arms to Israelis by easing regulations for licenses, adding around 7,000 firearms to settlers. This has further blurred the line between civilian and soldier, enabling armed settlers to act with a sense of authority whether wearing a uniform or not, most acting without any command structure and with a sense of entitlement — and impunity.
While reversing the settlement enterprise is the only politically and morally sound path, it is unlikely, even if Mr. Netanyahu’s government finally falls in October.
The two dominant camps within the Israeli political landscape today are what might be called the annexation camp and the control camp. The annexation camp is best represented by the far-right politicians in the Netanyahu coalition. They have worked tirelessly to quash the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. Most of them prefer the formal annexation of all of the West Bank to Israel, while the more moderate among this group, including some politicians in the opposition, aim for formal, or at least de facto, annexation of what was known under the Oslo Accords as Area C — the 60 percent of the West Bank under Israeli control and where Israeli settlements are largely located.
The control camp includes much of the defense establishment and centrist leaders. Among this group, the hope is to preserve Israeli military control over Palestinians and retain many of the settlements without establishing provocative new settlements, while minimizing friction with Palestinians, primarily by reining in settler violence — a quieter occupation of sorts. Flashpoints, like the recent approval of construction in an area known as E1 east of Jerusalem, a divisive plan that would further cantonize Palestinians and cut the West Bank in half, would thus most likely be avoided. However, if this government actually manages to start construction there, it’s unclear whether a new government would reverse the move.
The phenomenon of settlement expansion and terror did not begin with the current Israeli government and, in all likelihood, will not end with it. Settler militias clearly act with state backing in the service of a greater national project that is largely uncontested in Israel: Israel’s permanent control over much of the West Bank. A recent poll found that 55 percent of Israeli Jews want to keep settlements in any future agreement with the Palestinians, while 38 percent support annexation of the West Bank.
While any reduction in settler violence is a welcome and necessary step, to end the systematic destruction of Palestinian life and truly facilitate Palestinian self-determination, external pressure from countries around the world will be necessary. First, the international community must insist that the next Israeli government put an end to settler militias. It must then compel Israel to dismantle the settlement enterprise as a whole.
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4) The Ex-Salesman Bringing the Far Right to the Cusp of Power in Germany
Ulrich Siegmund, 35, once sold air fresheners. Now his far-right party is the favorite to win a state election in eastern Germany on Sunday.
By Christopher F. Schuetze, Sept. 6, 2026
Reporting from Tangermünde and Magdeburg, Germany
Ulrich Siegmund, center, is the lead candidate for the far-right party Alternative for Germany in a state election in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday. The party is projected to finish first. Annegret Hilse/Reuters
During the coronavirus pandemic, a little-known German state lawmaker with an upbeat patter and a telegenic smile started railing on TikTok against pandemic regulations. Complaining about masks, vaccinations and other government requirements that he deemed “crazy,” the lawmaker attracted millions of viewers with his videos by using an affable tone to deliver an anti-establishment message.
Now, that lawmaker, Ulrich Siegmund, has harnessed his online popularity to come closer to power than any other far-right politician in Germany since the Nazi era ended in 1945.
Mr. Siegmund, 35, a former air freshener salesman, is the lead candidate for the Alternative for Germany party in Saxony-Anhalt, a state in eastern Germany where the party is projected to finish first in a statewide election on Sunday.
If the party, known by its German initials, AfD, wins an outright majority, Mr. Siegmund will become the first far-right politician to govern a German state since the re-establishment of the country’s democracy nearly eight decades ago. That would be a convulsive moment for Germany’s postwar political system, which was designed in the aftermath of World War II to prevent politicians deemed extremist from ever taking office.
To the political establishment in Berlin, Mr. Siegmund’s party is an outcast. The domestic intelligence agency has labeled it as “suspected extremist,” an accusation it rejects as politically motivated. The party has said that Islam is incompatible with the German Constitution and has vowed mass deportations of immigrants. Several of its leaders are close to Russia, and some have made dog whistle comments about the Nazi era, including by minimizing the Holocaust and repeating Nazi slogans.
Mr. Siegmund himself has said, in a podcast interview with Politico, that he could not “presume to judge” if the Holocaust was humanity’s worst-ever crime, “because I can’t possibly come to terms with the entirety of human history.” He also declined to condemn supporters who chanted his surname, Siegmund, in the style of the Nazi salute, “Sieg Heil.”
Still, Mr. Siegmund has won over voters in Saxony-Anhalt, experts say, through his ability to present the party’s hard-line policies in a more approachable and optimistic tone than many of his AfD colleagues, without distancing himself from extremists. In addition to deporting immigrants, the party has proposed cutting funding for public broadcasters, banning gay pride flags in schools and teaching more Russian, as well as tax breaks for large families and free child care.
“I can provide motivation, create a sense of optimism and get things moving forward again,” Mr. Siegmund said in an interview with The New York Times this year. (He declined more recent interview requests.)
That affability has made him more acceptable to voters beyond his hard-right base, said Prof. Steffen Mau, a prominent sociologist at Humboldt University of Berlin.
“He’s a canvas onto which people can project some kind of promise for the future,” Professor Mau said.
Many mainstream politicians, who have said Mr. Siegmund and the AfD are dangerous, also call his proposals unrealistic. “Whenever the topic turns to substance, when people actually ask how you intend to move our country forward economically, you’re nowhere to be found,” Sven Schulze, the incumbent governor of Saxony-Anhalt, said to Mr. Siegmund during a televised debate last month.
An August cover story in Germany’s premier newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, called him “the most dangerous man in Germany,” partly because his sunny disposition makes his party’s hard-line goals more palatable to some voters. Mr. Siegmund’s followers took it as a badge of honor and, during campaign stops, asked him to sign copies of the edition.
Mr. Siegmund is “so approachable and charming,” said Wolfram Adler, 67, a retired train driver who attended one of those rallies.
From Air Fresheners to Politics
Born in 1990, weeks after the reunification of East and West Germany, Mr. Siegmund was raised in the picturesque medieval town of Tangermünde, in eastern Germany.
Growing up in the east, he came of age amid increasing resentment about how reunification played out for his home region. The east’s economy, employment rates and population ebbed after 1990, leading many East Germans to feel excluded in the new Germany. It was a sense of grievance on which the AfD would later capitalize, particularly in Saxony-Anhalt where the unemployment rate of roughly 8 percent is well above the national average.
In his 20s, Mr. Siegmund worked as an account manager at a health care provider before starting his own business in Berlin selling room deodorizers.
He joined the Christian Democratic Union, a mainstream conservative party that currently leads the national coalition government.
But he soon grew tired of the party’s rigid leadership structures, he has said in past interviews with the news media, and joined the AfD in 2014. He was drawn to the AfD, he said, because the party stood against what he perceived as the highhanded policies of the national government in Berlin.
The AfD was founded in opposition to Germany’s adoption of the euro. After it shifted to an anti-immigrant message, Mr. Siegmund ran on the party’s slate for the statehouse in 2016. He won a seat as the party netted 24 percent of the state vote, profiting from growing concerns about Germany’s decision to welcome roughly a million refugees during the European migrant crisis. He also served on his local council alongside his father and brother.
He rose to national fame in 2021 with his personable videos about pandemic restrictions, helping to project both the party and himself as the voice of voters who felt disenfranchised by mainstream parties.
Now, Mr. Siegmund has more than 850,000 followers on TikTok, an astronomical number for any German politician, giving him a platform that helped to amplify his stump speeches on the campaign trail this summer.
When speaking to sizable crowds, he has often filmed the scene on his phone, turning the camera toward the crowds to show viewers how big they were.
“When you see all of Siegmund’s campaign appearances, it becomes perfectly clear: They’re not primarily intended for the live audience, they’re primarily for the internet,” said Paula Diehl, a professor who studies populist leaders at Kiel University.
His preppy shirts and his trademark tuft of graying hair have made him instantly recognizable in Tangermünde, his hometown of 10,000 residents. During the Times interview this year, passers-by repeatedly greeted him, wished him luck or smiled.
Throughout the conversation, he combined a measured, even tolerant tone with a hard-line, exclusionary message.
He said that he did not blame immigrants for coming to Germany — before, seconds later, vowing to make their lives in his state “very uncomfortable.”
Combining Nostalgia With Optimism
The backgrounds of his campaign team also highlight his contradictions. The production company behind Mr. Siegmund’s genial campaign videos is led by a far-right activist with the Identitarians, a movement that German intelligence has accused of extremism. Mr. Siegmund’s spokesman was once part of a banned extremist group inspired by the Hitler Youth.
Mr. Siegmund did not reply to requests for comment about these links. In interviews with other outlets, he dismissed their relevance.
Mr. Siegmund, said Professor Diehl, “pretends to engage in an inclusive discourse and then immediately shatters it.”
Part of his strategy has been to tap into nostalgia for East Germany among some residents, even though he was born after it collapsed. Though many remember Communism as a dictatorship, some recall it as a time of full employment and stability.
One campaign event featured a comedian who sang the East German national anthem — an act so contentious, because it appeared to validate an authoritarian regime, that even some AfD politicians distanced themselves from it.
At some events, Mr. Siegmund rode through the countryside on a Simson, an anemic two-stroke East German motorcycle that has long been associated with life during Communism. His machine was painted baby blue to match the AfD’s colors.
At other times, he has sought to look forward instead of back. Tapping into widespread disenchantment with high unemployment and living costs, he has painted a picture of a better, if ill-defined, future under AfD leadership.
“Things are going downhill everywhere, and that’s a bad and demotivating place to start,” he said in the Times interview. “I want things to start moving uphill,” he said.
Critics say he is simply selling false hope, pointing to his past life as a salesman.
“I discovered my strength in sales early on,” Mr. Siegmund told a business magazine in 2014. “I love to sell.”
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5) One School District’s Fight Against Trump’s Anti-Transgender Push
Jefferson County, Colo., is one of the few public school systems to sue the Trump administration over demands that it revoke transgender protections or face funding cuts.
By Michael C. Bender, Sept. 7, 2026
Michael C. Bender has been covering the Trump administration’s efforts to force cultural changes through the education system. He reported from Golden, Colo.
The dispute has thrust Jeffco Public Schools into the center of a fight that President Trump has led targeting transgender Americans. Chet Strange for The New York Times
Rob Stein had been interim school superintendent in Jefferson County, Colo., for 22 days when he sued the Trump administration this summer over demands to change their transgender-inclusive policies.
Dr. Stein and other district officials say they had no choice. The cash-strapped district, Jeffco Public Schools, risked losing all $50 million of its federal funding for school meals and special education if they refused. But if they acquiesced, they concluded, they would violate state laws that protect transgender students from discrimination.
“This has been just an enormous distraction,” Dr. Stein said in an interview from the district’s foothill-framed headquarters. “It has added a lot of stress to the system and to the kids who are being targeted here.”
What the district cast as a practical decision is viewed as a rare counterstrike from public schools, universities and hospitals in support of a transgender rights movement that has been on its heels under President Trump after a decade of hard-fought successes in school board rooms and courts.
Z Williams, an advocate for transgender rights and co-director of the Bread and Roses Legal Center in Denver, said most institutions facing pressure have opted for “voluntary capitulation.”
Some schools targeted by the Trump administration have agreed to settlements or changed their policies based on Mr. Trump’s executive orders that forbid the government from recognizing gender identity instead of biological sex, barred transgender athletes in female sports and rolled back prior administrative guidance that sex-discrimination laws protected gender identity.
“I’m just incredibly proud of this school board,” Z Williams said. “Trans people are being more and more villainized and more and more marginalized. So it’s really impressive for Jeffco to fight on these issues.”
The dispute has thrust the school district into the center of the mushrooming culture war that Mr. Trump has led against transgender Americans. It encapsulates virtually every flashpoint of the political struggle between gender identity and biological sex that has become central to Mr. Trump’s effort to reassert conservative social values into public schools and universities.
The legal battle has also put a spotlight on an impossible squeeze facing educators across the country. Caught between state laws or court orders protecting transgender students and the executive decrees from the White House aimed at undercutting those safeguards, Jeffco is testing the limits of federal pressure versus local governance.
The Education Department, where Linda McMahon, the education secretary, received a summons in the lawsuit on Aug. 13, has not yet filed its formal response with the court. In a statement, a spokeswoman said the agency had referred the case to the Justice Department because the district had “taken no steps to protect women and girls.”
The investigation into Jeffco is one of more than five dozen the administration has opened into school districts and universities since 2025 over potential violations of anti-discrimination protections for female students, widely known as Title IX. The administration argues that allowing those assigned as male at birth access to girls’ sports teams and bathrooms violates Title IX and risks distressing girls.
In March, the administration announced that Jeffco had violated federal nondiscrimination laws by allowing students access to restrooms, locker rooms and sports teams based on their gender identity instead of biological sex. A key data point was that 61 boys were participating on girls’ athletic teams. The figure startled even district officials, mostly because, they said, there were no transgender girls competing on girls’ teams.
The district said the Trump administration had misinterpreted the information. Though the records show male participants on girls’ teams, they were team managers and mascots, not athletes. District officials said the federal government also may have confused a cross-country roster in which the same coach oversees separate programs for boys and girls.
Asked about the discrepancy, an Education Department spokesperson repeated that federal investigators determined male participants had “at least 61 roster spots on girls’ sports teams.”
To lead its defense in court, the district has enlisted the law firm of Jack Smith, the former special counsel who directed a pair of criminal investigations against Mr. Trump resulting in grand jury indictments. The firm also represents other districts facing similar investigations, including Shawnee Mission, Kan.; Montgomery County, Md.; and Fairfax County, Va.
The Jeffco lawsuit accuses the administration of failing to follow proper procedures in threatening the funding cuts, and of misinterpreting Title IX to mean that schools must separate students by their biological sex in restrooms and athletic facilities.
“No court has so held,” according to the lawsuit, “no properly issued regulations so require, and the Supreme Court expressly left that question open.”
Federal laws typically override conflicting state statutes, but the district argues that state law outweighs White House decrees. The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act, first enacted in 1957, was updated in 2007 and in the years since to extend protections to transgender people.
The dispute has drawn key Washington figures to Colorado. Early last month, Harmeet Dhillon, the government’s top civil rights lawyer, was the keynote speaker at a fund-raiser for Jeffco Kids First, a local parents’ rights group. The group has filed multiple complaints with the federal government about the school district’s gender policies since last year, Lindsay Datko, the head of Jeffco Kids First, said in an interview.
During the event, held in a hotel ballroom across the street from the school district offices, Ms. Dhillon gave credit to Jeffco Kids First and other conservative-leaning parent groups, which the administration has increasingly relied on to identify targets for civil rights investigations.
“Passionate community members — like all of you in this room — are part of the reason why this Department of Justice, perhaps for the first time ever, is taking the side of parents as vigorously as you’re seeing in this administration,” she said.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said that Ms. Dhillon left before fund-raising activities started and that her appearance was approved by the agency’s ethics team.
Ms. Datko, a former teacher with four children enrolled in JeffCo schools, said she formed Jeffco Kids First in 2020 in response to restrictions from the Covid-19 pandemic. The group’s attention has since turned to other issues, including gender policies, which she said had become so expansive that they were hurting the broader student body.
“If these policies are meant to give equal opportunities to everyone, isn’t it now doing the opposite?” she said. “Policies that accommodate a transgender child can accommodate other children as well.”
At a back-to-school meeting in August with school principals and other senior staff, district officials were walked through recent changes about how to talk with students about gender identity. Teachers, for example, no longer give students surveys that ask if it’s OK to use their pronouns when teachers call home.
Dr. Stein, the interim superintendent, said the language was aimed at being “more mindful” to concerns in the community while balancing student needs. “We also don’t want to squelch inquiry and suppress kids as they develop their own means of expression,” he said.
But that expression can, at times, be more difficult at home than at school for students like Olie Parlett, 14, who came out as nonbinary two years ago to their mother and stepfather, but feared their biological father’s reaction.
The private turmoil in their household over gender identity was thrust into the public square when Olie’s father, Dustin Gonzalez, stood at the lectern of a school board meeting last year and blamed district policies for his lack of awareness about his child’s preferred name and pronouns. Mr. Gonzalez had not been part of meetings about the changes with Olie and their mother, Bee Parlett, with a school counselor.
The moment went viral on social media as Elon Musk, and conservative influencers reposted the clip to suggest woke local school districts were brainwashing the nation’s children.
Mr. Gonzalez said in an interview that he had lost some of his custody rights during the past year, and had been estranged from his oldest child since May. He has pulled his two younger children, both from his second marriage, out of public schools and warned fellow parents to “be as involved as humanly possible” with the children.
Mr. Gonzalez criticized the county for suing the government. “This all started with them, all of it,” he said.
Sitting in a diner, picking at a breakfast of eggs and toast, Olie spoke about the series of extraordinary highs and lows already logged on their short journey, including feeling targeted and dismissed by the president of the United States. They also recalled the strict science teacher known to inspire fear in students who showed them unexpected empathy.
But Olie appeared torn about whether lawsuits would help change any minds about gender identity issues.
“People hate what they don’t understand,” Olie said. “But if they would just hang out with someone who is trans or go to a drag show, they would see the healing joy, and in about 10 minutes their preconceived notions will not be there.”
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6) Why Did Trump Order Up 660 Million Pounds of Mystery Meat?
By Eric Schlosser, Sept. 7, 2026
Eric Schlosser is the author of “Fast Food Nation.”
“Country-of-origin labeling on beef used to be mandatory in the United States. That changed in 2015, when a Republican-controlled Congress, led by Speaker of the House John Boehner, ended the requirement. Just over a year later, Mr. Boehner was appointed to the board of JBS Foods International. Today, four large meatpacking companies control about 85 percent of the market for beef in the United States. Two of those companies — JBS and National Beef — are Brazilian-owned. Smithfield Foods, America’s largest pork company, was purchased by a Chinese company in 2013. Although Smithfield doesn’t currently import pork from China, if it ever does, that fact won’t appear on the label.”
If you buy a T-shirt at Gap, it will have a label that tells you where it was made. That’s federal law.
The same is true for automobiles, appliances, television sets, every fresh or frozen fruit and vegetable sold at the supermarket.
Beef and pork are notable exceptions to these laws. And that may help to explain why President Trump signed a proclamation last week that will allow the duty-free importation of about 660 million pounds of inexpensive beef.
If American consumers knew where that beef was coming from, they might not want to eat it.
The cuts of meat covered by Trump’s proclamation aren’t fresh sirloins, rib eyes and filets. They’re lean beef trimmings that will be added to fattier American cuts to make ground beef. They’re small chunks of frozen meat that could have been kept in cold storage overseas for years. They are the quintessence of generic industrial meat, imported here to be subsequently processed in massive grinders that combine pieces of tens of thousands of cattle from multiple countries, mainly into fast food hamburgers.
I’ve been a longtime critic of food-safety practices in the U.S. meatpacking industry. But some of the practices in the 16 countries currently authorized to export raw beef to the United States are worse than any on these shores. During the past year, China rejected two shipping containers of beef from Uruguay after finding residue of an anti-parasitic drug in the meat, and rejected beef from Argentina reportedly because it tested positive for a banned antibiotic that can cause serious blood disorders.
One of the worst food-safety scandals occurred in Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of beef. In 2017, the Brazilian federal police raided nearly 200 meatpacking plants after allegations that government inspectors and politicians were being bribed to allow the sale of contaminated beef. Rotten meat treated with ascorbic acid and other chemicals to mask the contamination had been sold to hospitals and schools in Brazil and also been exported. Executives at the Brazilian company JBS, the largest beef producer in the world, later admitted to bribing inspectors.
American cattle industry leaders say that Mr. Trump’s move will hurt domestic ranchers and do little to reduce the price of ground beef. They say the real cost savings will be enjoyed by meatpacking companies, fast food chains and supermarkets.
Why did Mr. Trump come up with this scheme to import hundreds of millions of pounds of beef?
“Regime Change,” the recent book by the Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, contains an interesting clue: a White House meeting last November between President Trump and Joesley Batista, whose family controls JBS.
Mr. Batista had long been considered persona non grata in Washington, having been jailed in Brazil as a result of, among other things, paying $186 million in bribes to almost 2,000 politicians, including three Brazilian presidents, to obtain state financing for his family’s company. In 2019, after JBS bought several American meatpacking companies, Senator Marco Rubio and his colleague Robert Menendez deplored JBS’s “admitted criminal conduct,” its “business relationships with Venezuela’s Maduro regime, as well as its growing reliance on financing from entities aligned with the Chinese government.” The senators argued that allowing JBS to own U.S. companies could endanger America’s food supply and national security.
Mr. Batista gained the White House meeting last November, Ms. Haberman and Mr. Swan wrote, because of his friendship with Melania Trump. In addition, a JBS subsidiary had donated $5 million to Mr. Trump’s second inauguration, the largest gift from any individual or corporation. Not long afterward, JBS got approval from the Securities and Exchange Commission to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, a privilege the company had sought for almost a decade.
After the White House meeting with Mr. Trump, Mr. Batista flew to Venezuela at Mr. Trump’s request, met with President Nicolás Maduro and urged him to resign. Mr. Batista’s unusual diplomatic endeavor did not succeed, but in July, a company owned by his family acquired a major stake in Venezuelan oil production, with the blessing of the new Trump-backed government there.
The European Union suspended imports of beef from Brazil this past Thursday because of concerns about antibiotic misuse. Mr. Trump’s proclamation facilitating beef imports from Brazil took effect the same week. Calling these facts to public view, the writer Shanley Hunt allowed that perhaps it’s just a coincidence. According to the The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Trump announced his intention to allow duty-free foreign beef just a day after another meeting with Mr. Batista at the White House. Perhaps that’s a coincidence, too.
And yet it’s remarkable that the livelihood of American ranchers is being shaped in private meetings between the president of the United States and a representative of Brazil’s largest exporter of beef.
Country-of-origin labeling on beef used to be mandatory in the United States. That changed in 2015, when a Republican-controlled Congress, led by Speaker of the House John Boehner, ended the requirement. Just over a year later, Mr. Boehner was appointed to the board of JBS Foods International.
Today, four large meatpacking companies control about 85 percent of the market for beef in the United States. Two of those companies — JBS and National Beef — are Brazilian-owned. Smithfield Foods, America’s largest pork company, was purchased by a Chinese company in 2013. Although Smithfield doesn’t currently import pork from China, if it ever does, that fact won’t appear on the label.
Last year the Senate majority leader, John Thune, and Senator Cory Booker introduced bipartisan legislation that would once again require that meat be labeled according to its country of origin. In March, the Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, introduced separate legislation that would require tougher antitrust enforcement in the meatpacking industry, break up the big four beef companies, strengthen protections for independent ranchers and place limits on foreign ownership of American meat companies.
Those bills are a good start. In the early 1970s, before the administration of President Ronald Reagan gutted antitrust enforcement, the top four beef companies had only 21 percent of the U.S. market. When that market was truly competitive, Americans ate more beef than they do today, the nation had more than twice as many cattle ranchers — and foreign corporations didn’t control the most valuable sector of American agriculture.
Until a new labeling act gets passed, if you want to eat a hamburger, I suggest going to your local butcher shop, rather than the supermarket, ordering cuts of American beef, and asking for them to be ground on the premises. Or grind it at home. Otherwise, there’s really no way of knowing what’s in your meat, or how many international borders it crossed to reach your plate.
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7) Why Labor’s Share of Wealth Is Shrinking
By Brent Neiman, Sept. 7, 2026
Mr. Neiman is a professor of economics at the University of Chicago.
Millie von Platen
Workers are earning a smaller and smaller share of the economy’s income. Their cut — referred to by economists as “the labor share” — has been falling for decades. And it’s getting worse. During the past few years, it declined at a rapid clip and is now at its lowest level on record — about 53 percent of income, down from about 65 percent after World War II.
Many policymakers blame industry consolidation and corporate greed for keeping a lid on workers’ compensation. Sure enough, there are now only three large wireless companies and four major airlines; Google dominates search. Corporate profits as a share of G.D.P. just reached a record high. When the share of income paid to capital — interest, rent, profits and dividends — rises, the labor share necessarily falls.
Given that diagnosis, the prescription might seem to write itself. Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and others on the left argue for breaking up large firms, particularly in tech. So do Senator Josh Hawley, Vice President JD Vance and others on the right. The impulse to rein in corporate giants isn’t limited to the United States. Regulators in Europe, Japan and Britain are also supercharging their competition policy and stepping up enforcement.
That may be the wrong solution, because it’s not rising market power, but new technology — A.I. being the latest example — that is probably the most important force reducing the labor share. Breaking up big companies won’t help restore labor’s share and may not help workers at all. Designing policies for a change this significant requires understanding the real cause.
A little over a decade ago, Loukas Karabarbounis and I documented a global decline in the labor share. Labor shares stood well below their historical values in the United States and in most places we looked. That included advanced economies such as Germany and Japan where labor laws or unions were strong, and developing countries where they were not, such as China and India. Since the decline was generally largest where the price of computing and communications equipment fell most, we concluded that replacing workers with machines in production — substituting capital for labor — was bringing the labor share down.
At the time, our findings were controversial. Standard textbooks and economic models treated a stable labor share as a law of nature. Earlier in the 20th century, the labor share was indeed surprisingly steady — the great economist John Maynard Keynes called this stability “a bit of a miracle.”
Following our work, other academics began to offer their own explanations for why the labor share had declined. For instance, housing got more expensive and generated more rental income for owners. In 1999, government statisticians changed how they counted expenditures on software, and in 2013 expanded that treatment to research spending. And U.S. tax law increasingly encouraged small-business owners to pay themselves with profits rather than wages. All these circumstances affect the measured labor share.
But none of those theories can explain why the decline showed up both outside the United States and inside the Fortune 500, where many of those housing and tax issues are minimized. Perhaps for that reason, more blame has gone to higher markups, profits and market power.
As we later showed, though, inferring market power from accounting data on profits is tricky. Consider a firm that produces furniture. It employs workers, who make products in a factory. If the firm rents its factory and equipment, then reported profits equal whatever money is left from sales after spending on materials and after paying labor and the landlord. If the furniture company owns its factory and equipment, as most do, reported profits will be higher because they include the rent the firm is effectively paying to itself. There are lots of ways that profits could vary even though the factory does essentially the same thing. It is hard to identify the cause.
While we can debate about what macroeconomic forces landed the most blows to the labor share over the past five decades, when it comes to the last five quarters, technological change has to be a leading contender in explaining its rapid decline. Anyone who has used ChatGPT can see how much work now done by people could soon be done by technology. If A.I. substitutes for labor as quickly and broadly as some predict, the strain from lost jobs and upended careers could eclipse anything in recent memory. Some workers will gain, but many others, including those lacking capital income, will struggle. Unemployment will be a key number to watch.
If the labor share is falling because of a decline in competition, antimonopoly policy would indeed be the right medicine. But if, as I believe is likely, A.I. is the key force that continues to drive the labor share lower, our focus should be elsewhere. Stronger policies that cushion job losses and speed up retraining will be essential.
We will also need to reduce the bias toward capital income in the tax code. For example, firms that immediately write off the expense of machine purchases shouldn’t be allowed to fully deduct the interest on the loans they used to fund them. And capital gains on investments shouldn’t escape taxes simply because those investments are passed on to heirs. Oddities such as these lower the cost of capital, which further encourages the shift away from labor.
The overall scale of the social safety net could be indexed to trends in the labor share — expanding the net as labor share falls. Taxpayer-funded accounts, seeded at birth and invested in broad equity indexes, would also help. The new Trump Accounts move in this direction, but to narrow wealth gaps and limit strain on the budget, the deposits should flow to children in the neediest families.
Keynes’s “miracle” is over. We shouldn’t expect antitrust law to deliver another one. That’s just not feasible. The machines will keep getting better and are likely to claim ever more of the nation’s income. We can fight that and end up worse off — or we can make sure more people claim a share of the benefits.
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8) History Should Haunt Us
By Jonathan Eig, Sept. 7, 2026
Mr. Eig is the author of “The Birth of the Pill.”
Illustration by Ben Denzer
There’s a new play opening this week, and I’m a character in it. I have mixed feelings.
The play is called “The Birth of the Pill,” and it’s adapted from my 2014 book of the same name. Rather than merely transferring the story from book to stage, the playwright Jessica Huang explores what I left out — and calls me to task for it.
We all should embrace and even celebrate history’s messy nature: Question it, debate it, get down in the dirt and wrestle with it. When Ms. Huang asked if I would be a character in her play, I said yes. I said that I had never felt ownership of the story. How could I? History is a conversation, and I never intended to do all the talking. History is also an exercise in failure; the goal is to fail as little as possible, but those of us who write history will always get things wrong and leave things out.
Both the book and the play focus on the people who invented the birth control pill and delivered it to the world, largely in the 1950s when anti-birth control laws were still on the books and the idea of selling a drug designed to promote pleasurable sex, reproductive freedom and women’s equality was considered preposterous by many. My book focused on Margaret Sanger, the controversial visionary and activist; Katharine Dexter McCormick, the brilliant philanthropist; Gregory Pincus, the outcast biologist who figured out the science; and John Rock, the Catholic gynecologist who supervised the clinical trials. They were flawed rebels out to blow up the world.
In Ms. Huang’s adaptation, the star is a fictionalized young Puerto Rican woman named Ramona Delgado. As the play begins, it’s both 1950 and 2026, and the audience sees Ramona onstage reading my book. She’s not happy. She thinks the book should have centered on the Puerto Rican women upon whom the pill was tested before it was approved, when doses were much too high, when serious side effects ran rampant and when women in Puerto Rico and elsewhere were not told they were part of a clinical trial.
Ms. Sanger, Ms. McCormick, Dr. Pincus and Dr. Rock had their turns at shaping history. Jonathan Eig had his chance to tell the story. Now, courtesy of Ms. Huang, it’s Ramona’s turn, and she wants answers.
This is not the way I had dreamed of seeing one of my books onstage. On the other hand, Ramona raises issues that I’ve been wrestling with a long time. The older I get, the less I seem to know. And the older my books get, the more I can see what I’ve left out or not properly emphasized. I’ve come to understand that history never contains the whole of history. In my book on Jackie Robinson, I paid scant attention to the Negro League players who never made it to the major leagues. In my book on Martin Luther King Jr., I devoted little space to the role of the labor movement in the civil rights struggle. In my pill book, while I do talk about the treatment of Puerto Rican women in the trials, I failed to convey their suffering.
Feelings of hope, or loss, or grief, are especially vulnerable to omission from history, in part because they’re not so easily documented. The yearnings of pacifists, for example, seldom make their way into historical accounts of war. Is it possible that unrecorded history is just as important as recorded history? And if it is, what can we do about it? This is what Ms. Huang explores in her version of “The Birth of the Pill.”
I’ve read the play, and I admire it. It’s smart, funny and solidly grounded in history despite its imaginative leaps. At the same time, it hurts to see a spotlight shone (literally) on one of my book’s flaws. It makes me feel as if I failed my readers and some of my subjects. I suppose it’s inevitable that history focuses on the winners, on those bold and brilliant individuals who dare to push for human progress. But Ms. Huang’s play reminds us that suffering drives progress, too. An estimated 1,500 women in poverty-stricken sections of Puerto Rico participated in clinical trials for the pill. They suffered nausea, dizziness and vomiting. Some developed blood clots. Three died; no autopsies were ever done to find out why. My research taught me some of their stories, but Ms. Huang’s play made their experiences more vivid and more emotional than my own work managed to.
As I prepare to watch Ramona Delgado (played by María Victoria Martínez) step onstage at Chicago’s TimeLine Theatre Company this week to confront a character named Jonathan Eig, I’m both nervous and excited. I feel as if a ghost is floating out from between the lines of my book to haunt me.
Then again, I think history should haunt us. If it doesn’t, if we try to cut ourselves off from the past and live only in the present, avoiding the discomfort of difficult truths, we might as well return to the age of savagery. Only then is Ramona Delgado’s anguish in vain.
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9) Israel Launches Deadly Strikes in Lebanon as Military Campaign Intensifies
The bombardment killed 11 people, Lebanese officials said, after days of attacks that have spurred worries that Israel is looking to push deeper into Lebanese territory.
By Christina Goldbaum, Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, Sept. 7, 2026
Workers sifted through rubble on Monday after an Israeli strike on a village in southern Lebanon. Credit...Reuters
The Israeli military launched a new wave of deadly strikes in southern Lebanon on Monday, part of an intensifying bombardment in recent days that has fueled fears that Israel could push deeper into Lebanese territory as it entrenches control of land it has seized.
Over the past three days, the strikes have killed 27 people and wounded 69 others, according to the Lebanese health ministry, one of the deadliest waves of attacks since a U.S.-brokered cease-fire with Lebanon was announced in June. The bombardments occurred days after Israeli officials announced that the military had captured a strategic ridge that Israel had sought to control for months.
On Monday, Israeli strikes in the village of Kfar Roummane in southern Lebanon killed at least 11 people, including two children and four women, the Lebanese health ministry said. Eight others, including three children, were injured.
The Israeli military said it had launched the strikes in response to drone attacks by Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, and targeted what it described as Hezbollah infrastructure, including a weapons storage facility.
The latest escalation in the conflict began after Israel said on Friday that it had seized the ridge near the Lebanese city of Nabatieh, about six miles from the border.
The ridge, known as Ali al-Taher, had become a focal point in the conflict, which reignited in March when Hezbollah fired on Israel after the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran. Ali al-Taher sits above a sprawling underground Hezbollah base, and offers a commanding view across the valleys and roads of southeastern Lebanon.
The Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, said in a video statement on Friday that the capture of the ridge marked “the completion of the process of consolidating our hold on the security zone in southern Lebanon,” referring to an Israeli-occupied strip of Lebanese territory along the border.
Israeli officials have issued evacuation warnings for two villages over the past two days, both of which are outside that swath of southern Lebanon, which Israel has occupied since the latest war broke out. Israel has issued only one other evacuation warning since the U.S.-brokered cease-fire in June.
On Sunday, Israeli strikes killed seven people, including two women, in southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese health ministry.
Since June, the truce has frayed, with fighting continuing between Hezbollah and Israel across southern Lebanon. Hezbollah was not involved in the cease-fire and does not answer to the Lebanese government, raising questions about how it would be enforced.
On Saturday, Hezbollah condemned the escalating Israeli bombardment and said it was aimed at pressuring the Lebanese government — which has been engaged in U.S.-brokered talks with Israel — to capitulate to Israel’s demands.
The office of President Joseph Aoun of Lebanon said on Sunday that the new Israeli bombardment represented “a dangerous escalation.”
“President Aoun held the Israeli side fully responsible for this ongoing escalation, calling on the United States and the international community to take immediate action to stop these violations and hold the perpetrators accountable,” it said.
The Israeli military has entrenched its control of the swath of Lebanese territory it holds, which stretches as deep as about six miles into the country, prompting increasing uncertainty in the south. Israel has insisted that its forces will remain until Hezbollah is disarmed.
Since the cease-fire was declared, Lebanon and Israel have been engaged in direct, U.S.-brokered talks to end the conflict. The discussions led the two sides to agree in principle to a phased arrangement, under which the Lebanese military would disarm Hezbollah and move in to secure areas in southern Lebanon as Israeli forces withdrew.
But that process has largely stalled, with Israel and Hezbollah at odds over which side must act first. Hezbollah has consistently rejected demands to put down its weapons.
The lack of progress has led to frustration among residents of southern Lebanon, who have been displaced from their homes during the war. On Monday, mayors and municipal officials from dozens of occupied towns and villages in the area gathered in the city of Tyre to condemn the Israeli destruction and express frustration at the government’s stalled efforts to resolve the conflict.
“The Lebanese government is running after an illusory peace even as the enemy commits crimes,” said Ibrahim Hamza, the mayor of the coastal town of Naqoura.
Sarah Chaayto, Abdi Latif Dahir and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
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10) How to Fight Capitalism and Win
By Bonnie Weinstein, Sept/Oct 2026
The power of the capitalist class is based upon one thing—it’s ownership, by law, of the means of production and the profits created by the labor of the working class.
But workers have no say in the creation of these laws that guarantee wealth only for the capitalist class. All these laws relegate workers to wage-slavery—earning a tiny fraction of the wealth we create from our labor—getting paid only as much as we fight for.
Ending capitalist dictatorship over us seems insurmountable, but it’s not.
The foundation of capitalism
Our very survival depends upon selling our labor power to the wealthy for as much as we can possibly fight them for, and not a penny more. Workers must pay for everything that we need to survive—food, housing, healthcare, education, the clothes we wear, the tools we need for work, the transportation we need to get to work—we must pay out of pocket for everything while the wealthy flourish.
Capitalist democracy is democracy for the rich and totalitarianism for the poor
If you are a millionaire, billionaire or trillionaire you can afford anything, including winning elections. How can an independent candidate of the working class compete in the electoral process against the ruling elite?
It costs millions of dollars to win an election. To make matters worse, our labor organizations are working in partnership with the bosses by donating millions of dollars of funds collected from union members to capitalist politicians—mostly Democratic Party politicians who pretend to be on the side of the working class in order to tie us to their undemocratic electoral process that overwhelmingly favors those with the most money.
The wealthy spend millions of dollars on publicity for their campaigns that promise everything and deliver nothing—and often force give-backs that workers have fought for and lost. The capitalist elections are a lopsided battle that favors the wealthy over the poor.
Workers can’t compete fairly in capitalism’s electoral process where money rules and the poor are rendered voiceless. There can be no partnership between the exploiter and the exploited. The exploited must stand independently and in solidarity with each other if we are to survive.
Our only hope is to break from this rigged system and organize ourselves independently of the capitalist class.
We must fight our own battles based upon the power and strength of our unity and solidarity with one another and for the rightful full share of the wealth we produce through our labor. We are the overwhelming majority. All we need do is organize for our own benefit.
Capitalism’s predation
The depths and expanse to which capitalism’s profit motive is destroying us and our environment is staggering. In July three stories in the New York Times illustrated this destruction.
The first article, by Murray Carpenter, published July 6th, titled “Tobacco Companies Are Cashing In on Zyn’s Unstoppable Popularity,” is about how the tobacco industry is devising ways to get more people—especially youth—addicted to nicotine, which is proven harmful to the body:
“Along with vaping products, the Big Tobacco corporations have seized on the nicotine pouch market as a way to offset the steep decline in domestic sales of cigarettes. Pouch sales are projected to increase to more than $40 billion worldwide by 2033 from $6.9 billion in 2025, according to an analysis by Grand View Research, a market research firm. Companies are racing to meet the demand, so far investing more than $1 billion in plant production to accommodate the growth. Several states have welcomed the industry’s forays into the latest twists on nicotine products, handing out millions of dollars in tax credits and grants. But the marketing of nicotine-laden items like pouches, gums and lozenges as another safe alternative to traditional cigarettes has heightened public health concerns. Experts are accusing the tobacco industry of once again deliberately ignoring decades of science that proved the addictive nature of nicotine, and of stoking demand by producing more and more potent varieties. Reminiscent of Juul and other flavored vaping products that caused a public uproar over teenage consumption, the pouches — tobacco-free ‘lip pillows’ placed between the cheek and gum — have revived warnings that nicotine is highly addictive and can cause a host of conditions, like anxiety and heart arrhythmia. It also threatens a teenager’s still-developing brain, with the potential for affecting behavior and cognitive function, experts say.”
The second article dated July 9th, by Catrin Einhorn, titled, “Sea Mining Could Devastate an Enigmatic Group of Creatures, Researchers Warn” explains how deep-sea mining threatens the health of the oceans, but will take precedence over the welfare of life on earth in order to increase the profits of mining companies:
“Deep-sea mining threatens to drive to extinction more than half of the snails and other mollusks that rely on hydrothermal vents, according to the latest update of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List, the global scientific authority on the status of species. The finding comes as nations are expanding plans for deep-sea mining, eager to access valuable minerals needed for electronics and other uses. Some of these minerals are found in and near chimney-like structures around hydrothermal vents, areas where cold seawater seeps through fissures in the earth’s crust and hits magma. As the water heats, it picks up elements like copper, zinc, gold and silver before shooting back into the ocean at temperatures that can reach over 750 degrees Fahrenheit. The rapid cooling causes the metals to precipitate out. Companies are interested in harvesting these and other deep-sea metals, arguing that growing demand combined with the serious environmental impact of mining on land make oceans an attractive source. … The Trump administration has moved to push ahead with deep-sea mining in international waters without global approval.”
The third article, again, points out the insidious nature of capitalism’s quest for profits at the expense of our health—especially the health of our children.
In a July 27th article by Julia Belluz titled, “This Is the Way Out of Our Ultraprocessed Dystopia” she explains how capitalism deliberately produces unhealthy and addictive foods for the poor as a cheap substitute to the healthy diet we can’t afford:
“Researchers have uncovered how processed foods override the body’s built-in signals for satiety and nutrition and increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes and obesity, among other chronic diseases. … Philip Morris purchased Kraft in 1988, and a little earlier, R.J. Reynolds acquired major food brands and merged with Nabisco. The tobacco documents show that cigarette companies applied their knowledge about flavor optimization, youth marketing and brain chemistry to ultraprocessed foods in order to increase profits. … To play on a question that the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner David Kessler asked during the tobacco trials: Whose choice is driving the demand for ultraprocessed foods in America? Is it a choice by consumers to continue eating them? Or by food companies to maintain the public’s dependency on them?”
We have become immune to all the ways capitalism is destroying our lives and the planet in pursuit of profits—including their continued wars of aggression against working people around the world.
It is the ordinary people who fight and get killed in wars. The elite sit on their thrones and direct the hits that will benefit them the most financially because that’s all they are concerned about.
Our unity is free and our votes can be free, too
An independent organization of unity and solidarity among all of us who must work for a living can surmount the power of wealth because we are the overwhelming majority.
If we stood united in our demand for control over the wealth we produce by our work, we could turn the tables on the wealthy and end the balance of power of the rich over the poor forever.
And we could conceivably achieve this peacefully and without violence if we stop work on capitalism’s production for profit en masse—before they do destroy the world—and take control of the means of production out of their hands and into our own, for the benefit of all of us.
We could elect who we want to represent us. We could disarm capitalism, and free the world from their constant wars of power, destruction, threats and the illegal acquisition of the wealth we alone produce.
We can remove the borders that separate us and plan democratically to build a fair and equitable world internationally.
Production for the needs of all on a foundation of economic and social equality and justice is in our power to achieve—if we stand united.
All we need do is organize democratically in our own defense, and in defense of all life on earth.
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