Educate!
Education is the foundation of political change. In this section we provide news and analyses of current events that you won’t likely read or hear in the corporate media. Our sources are from organizations and independent media outlets free of corporate and government propaganda. We strongly encourage you to share these articles by email and social media so that together we create an echo chamber that overcomes the influence of the oligarchy. You will find large social media sharing buttons on the left side of each article when you open the article to read.
In March of 1979, Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear plant — which was powered by two pressurized light-water reactors — experienced a cooling malfunction that caused part of the core of the second reactor to melt, releasing radioactive material into the environment.
Constellation Energy has plans to reopen Three Mile Island, and Microsoft has agreed to buy power from it for 20 years.
Recent United States government zero-emissions energy incentives have spurred owners of closed-down nuclear plants to consider reopening them, reported Pennsylvania’s WESA.
Activists are asking the government of Pennsylvania to stop the reopening of the plant.
Big Ag’s Road To Brazil
September 24, 2024
Rachel Sherrington and Hazel Healy, DeSmog.
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Big Ag, Brazil, climate crisis, COP30, emissions, Energy, Food and Agriculture, G20, New York (NY)
This week, as business and government leaders, investors and campaigners gather for New York Climate Week, DeSmog is relaunching its big agriculture series, which will scrutinise the power of food and farming companies.
Agriculture used to play second fiddle to energy when it came to global warming, considered as a nice-to-have. But as global heating continues apace, emissions associated with food are rising fast.
Nitrous oxide – a planet-heating gas nearly 300 times as potent as CO2 when measured over 100 years – is accumulating in Earth’s atmosphere at unprecedented levels. Levels of methane – another powerful greenhouse gas critical to reducing emissions – have soared since the start of the decade and are showing “no hint of decline”.
Study: The Economic Case For A Public Rail System
September 24, 2024
Kira McDonald, Public Rail Now.
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Carbon emissions, climate crisis, Electrification, Environment, Health Care, Railroads, Report, Transportation, Worker Rights and Jobs
Public Rail Now is excited to announce their second research report in their campaign for public rail ownership. “From Margins to Growth: The Economic Case for a Public Rail System,” lays bare the economic facts for the current state of the US rail system is in a downward spiral, facts working railroaders have been espousing for decades. Public rail ownership has the potential to save up to $140 billion annually for US consumers, provide an estimated 180,000 new rail road jobs, avert $190 Billion in public health, environmental and fiscal cost, while helping to meet climate goals by avoiding 180 metric tonnes of carbon emissions.
Nearly 200 Killed Within Hours As Israel Expands Attacks On Lebanon
September 23, 2024
The Cradle.
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Axis of Resistance, Genocide, Israel, Lebanon, Wars and Militarism
Over 180 people have been killed in a massive wave of Israeli airstrikes targeting southern and eastern Lebanon on 23 September.
“These raids have led, until the issuance of this statement, to 182 martyrs and 727 wounded, including children, women and paramedics among the martyrs and wounded,” the Emergency Operations Center of the Lebanese Health Ministry said on Monday afternoon. The toll is expected to continue rising.
Israeli airstrikes are also targeting the Bekaa region in eastern Lebanon. Hundreds of strikes have taken place in the last few hours.
Several civilian homes have been targeted and destroyed in several villages, including Sohmor in the Bekaa and several areas in the south, Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) reported.
The Left Wins Presidential Election In Sri Lanka
September 23, 2024
Atul Chandra and Vijay Prashad, People's Dispatch.
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Austerity, Elections, Finance and the Economy, International Monetary Fund (IMF), Marxism, Sri Lanka
On September 22, 2024, the Sri Lankan election authority announced that Anura Kumara Dissanayake of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP)-led National People’s Power (NPP) alliance won the presidential election. Dissanayake, who has been the leader of the left-wing JVP since 2014, defeated thirty-seven other candidates, including the incumbent president Ranil Wickremesinghe of the United National Party (UNP) and his closest challenger Sajith Premadasa of the Samagi Jana Balawegava. The traditional parties that dominated Sri Lankan politics – such as the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and the UNP – are now on the backfoot, although they dominate the Sri Lankan parliament (the SLPP has 105 out of 225 seats, while the UNP has 3 seats).
Documents Reveal US Intel Cutout’s Iranian Counter-Revolution Plans
September 23, 2024
Kit Klarenberg and Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone.
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Iran, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Neoconservatism, US Imperialism, US Regime Change
Leaked documents and emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal a seemingly covert effort by American regime change operatives to impose radical leadership on the remnants of Iran’s protest movement against the mandatory hijab, in order to topple the government of Iran.
The initiative was spearheaded by Carl Gershman, the longtime director of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US government-funded non-profit which advances regime change operations across the globe. Originally conceived by the Reagan administration’s CIA, the NED has meddled in elections and sponsored coup leaders from Nicaragua to Venezuela to Hong Kong, and beyond.
Spring Flowers Turn Into Fruits In The Fall
September 23, 2024
Bouthaina Shaaban, Orinoco Tribune.
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Africa, China, Global Solidarity, Global South, Infrastructure, Military bases, South Africa
Amid the stench of death, aggression, murder, and the extermination of an ancient, noble, and civilized people and the international impotence and hypocrisy that have become a catastrophe for humanity at large, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation commenced in Beijing between September 4 and 6, with the participation of over fifty African countries and a comprehensive, serious, and profound agenda that touches upon the wisdom and heritage of the ancients. The forum draws upon the spirit of friendship and constructive cooperation to build on these foundations, adding the fruits of human intellect to envision a future based on shared interests, mutual respect, and the pursuit of benefit for all.
Corporations Plunder US West’s Water Amid Worst Drought In 1,200 Years
September 23, 2024
Katie Rose Quandt, Truthout.
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Drought, Environment, Privatization, Wall Street, Water
Rural La Paz County, Arizona, positioned on the Colorado River across from California, is at the center of a growing fight over water in the American Southwest. At the heart of the battle is a question: Should water be treated as a human right, to be allocated by governments with the priority of sustaining life? Or is it a commodity to be bought, sold and invested in for the greatest profits?
As the West suffers its worst megadrought in 1,200 years, investors have increasingly eyed water as a valuable asset and a resource to be exploited. For years, investment firms have bought up farmland throughout the Southwest, drilling to new depths for their water-hungry crops and causing nearby wells to run dry.
From UK To Norway, Drillers Legally Dump Tons Of Waste Into The North Sea
September 23, 2024
Justin Nobel, DeSmog.
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Fossil Fuels, North Sea, Radioactive Waste, Water Pollution
It was a stormy grey day in 1987 when a young environmental scientist found himself wearing a survival suit with a set of homemade sampling contraptions trailing in the ocean on an inflatable boat in the Baltic Sea. He was hunting a waste stream much of the world had never heard of: oilfield waste.
Working at that time for the environmental group Greenpeace, Marco Kaltofen was racing after a stunning realisation: that in many offshore oil and gas settings, oilfield waste is simply being dumped right into the ocean.
Fast-forward almost four decades, and an analysis by DeSmog shows that companies have been legally dumping toxic and radioactive oilfield waste into the North Sea — Europe’s arm of the North Atlantic — for decades, with largely unknown consequences for a sensitive and beloved marine environment.
From The Phony Debate And Gaza To The Uhuru 3
September 22, 2024
Ajamu Baraka and Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report.
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Debates, Gaza, Human Rights, Lies, Repression, State Repression, Uhuru 3
Our first topic will be the trial of the Uhuru 3.” Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel, were found guilty of conspiring to be foreign agents in a federal case in Tampa, Florida involving the African People's Socialist Party and its Solidarity Network. The 3 were accused of being foreign agents. The jury acquitted them on that charge, yet convicted them of this conspiracy charge, which seems to be odd until we realize the history of how the Black left are targeted, going back to the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Ajamu, talk to us about your thoughts on the case of the Uhuru 3 and what it tells us.
Ajamu Baraka: It's important for people to understand the importance of this case, because it's quite clear to me that the indictment and the aggressive prosecution of the Uhuru 3 was meant to be a shot across the bow, if you will, to intimidate left opposition, progressive opposition in the US that is emerging and solidifying, in opposition to not only Gaza, but in opposition to the broader agenda, warmongering that is at the center of US policy from Ukraine to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and on the African continent.
Hezbollah Fires 115 Rockets Toward Israel In Retaliation For Exploding Electronics Attack
September 22, 2024
Palestine Bureau, Mondoweiss.
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Axis of Resistance, Exploding Pagers, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Retaliation, Terrorism, Wars and Militarism
In the early hours of Sunday morning, September 22, Hezbollah launched several barrages of rockets on northern Israeli targets in the Haifa region, including a military airbase.
The Lebanese resistance group said in a statement that the salvo of rockets was an “initial response” to the “monstrous massacre perpetrated by the Israeli enemy across Lebanese territory on Tuesday and Wednesday,” referring to the Israeli pager and electronics explosions last week, which claimed the lives of 32 people and injured over 3,000 others.
The Lebanese response also comes two days after Israel’s bombing of Beirut’s southern Dahiya district on Friday that targeted and killed 15 leaders of the Radwan Force, Hezbollah’s elite military unit trained to invade Israeli territory. Among the slain were top Hezbollah commander and founder of the Radwan Force, Ibrahim Aqil.
Israel Closes Al Jazeera Bureau In Ramallah: All You Need To Know
September 22, 2024
Al Jazeera.
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Al Jazeera, Israel, Journalists, Palestine, Press Freedom, Wars and Militarism
On live television, heavily armed Israeli soldiers raided Al Jazeera’s occupied West Bank bureau in Ramallah and handed the bureau head, Walid al-Omari, a notice to shut it down.
The soldiers ordered everyone working the overnight shift at the bureau to leave, telling them they could take only their personal belongings. The order came from the Israeli military authority despite the bureau being in Area A, an area delineated as being under Palestinian control in the Oslo Accords. This is not the first time Israel has undertaken actions in the Oslo Accords-defined Area A, where Ramallah is and where the Palestinian Authority (PA) has its seat.
The Madness Of Antony Blinken
September 22, 2024
Joe Lauria, Consortium News.
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Antony Blinken, Neocons, Neoconservatism, Russia, Ukraine, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism
On March 7, 2022, two weeks after Moscow entered the civil war in Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CBS News from Moldova that the U.S. would give NATO-member Poland a “green light” to send Mig-29 fighter jets to Ukraine to enforce a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft.
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer then also backed the no-fly zone. But within days the Pentagon shot down the idea as it engaged in a consequential battle with the State Department and members of Congress to prevent a direct NATO military confrontation with Russia that could unleash history’s most unimaginable horrors.
Protest Under Fire: Fall 2024 Special Conventions Issue
It’s a powerful tool to force confrontation and shake up the status quo. From writing letters to protesting in the streets, from occupations to boycotts, our democracy demands that people have the freedom to exercise their constitutional rights, to hit the streets and speak loud. But all too often, police meet protests with violence and prosecutors punish activists. Over the past decade, we’ve faced a new wave of state and national legislation that seeks to criminalize protest.
In this quarterly publication, we examine the policies and practices that threaten First Amendment rights. We’ll also uplift the fights taking place in courtrooms, capitals, and on the street to defend the right to protest.
Eating Pets Or Devouring Sovereignty? Notes On Anti-Haitian Racism
September 21, 2024
Jemima Pierre, Black Agenda Report.
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Elections, Haiti, Occupation, Ohio, Racism, Republicans, US Intervention
The anti-Haitian utterances by the Republican presidential ticket unleashed an avalanche of racist memes and jokes about Haitians, Haitian migrants, and US citizens of Haitian descent. It began with Ohio senator and Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance’s tweet claiming – falsely – that “Haitian illegal immigrants” were “draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio.” Vance continued the lie by asserting, “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” Donald Trump was quick to follow up and double down on Vance’s slanderous comments.