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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.
Venezuela reported that a US destroyer illegally boarded a Venezuelan fishing boat carrying nine fishermen and detained them for eight hours. According to the Venezuelan statement, issued on Saturday, September 13, the vessel was in Venezuelan waters, “48 nautical miles from Blanquilla Island.”
The incident occurred on Friday, September 12, in Venezuela’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Under international law, an EEZ is a maritime area adjacent to a country’s territorial sea, extending up to 200 nautical miles from the baseline. The coastal state has sovereign rights to explore, utilize and preserve natural resources there, and has jurisdiction over economic and research activities in the region.
Israeli Strikes Leave 50,000 Homeless In Gaza
September 14, 2025
Palestine Chronicle.
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Gaza, Genocide, Israel, Palestine, Wars and Militarism
Since dawn on Sunday, Israeli occupation forces have killed 31 Palestinians, including aid workers, in a series of airstrikes and ground assaults across the Gaza Strip.
Local officials said that at least 50,000 people were made homeless following Israeli evacuation orders that forced residents to flee south along Rashid Al-Bahri Street.
The attacks come as Israel presses ahead with its nearly two-year genocidal war on Gaza, marked by attempts to reoccupy Gaza City and forcibly displace its residents.
Hospitals across the Strip reported dozens of casualties. Al-Quds Hospital confirmed seven people were killed in strikes on the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood in southern Gaza City, while 20 others were wounded by Israeli fire on Street 8. Emergency services reported four deaths in a strike on a displacement tent at Palestine Stadium, west of Gaza City.
ICE Abducts Man Suing Off-Duty Police For Abusing Day Laborers
September 14, 2025
Sarah Lazare and Ari Bloomekatz, In These Times.
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Chicago, ICE, Immigrant Rights, State Repression
Even though President Donald Trump says he is pivoting from plans to deploy the National Guard in Chicago — now eyeing Memphis as his next target — Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers appear to still be escalating operations throughout the area, with devastating consequences.
Willian Gimenez, a day laborer, was reportedly abducted outside of a barbershop in Little Village, a neighborhood in southwest Chicago, by ICE agents on Friday. The Latino Union of Chicago and Raise the Floor Alliance organized a news conference with immigration rights advocates, public officials and labor groups there in solidarity like Arise Chicago, the Chicago Workers Collaborative and Workers Center for Racial Justice, who all gathered with Gimenez’s friends and family outside of an ICE facility in Broadview to demand his release.
Mega-Dryness Spreads Throughout Northern Hemisphere
September 14, 2025
Robert Hunziker, Counter Punch.
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climate crisis, Global North, Megadrought, Water
Human-generated climate change, the result of enormous quantities of CO2 spewing into the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels (in 2024, the CO2 annual rate set a new all-time record of 3.75 ppm or an 18,600% increase over natural variability of 0.02 ppm per annum, according to paleoclimate pre-industrial data) causing widespread interconnectivity merging of dry regions of the planet. This is a new feature of global warming.
“Our entire infrastructure and civilization are based around a climate that no longer exists.” (John Marsham, professor Atmospheric Science, University of Leeds)
Dry areas of the planet are merging into massive mega-dry behemoth regions reflective of how far advanced climate change has progressed, with global warming turning hotter, and hotter, especially 2023-24 when global mean temperature increased by 0.3°C or 10-fold in one year, ushering in a full year of 1.5°C above pre-industrial.
Troops Out Of Our Cities! ICE Out Of Our Communities!
September 13, 2025
Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report.
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Donald Trump, ICE, Suppression, White Supremacy
There is a historical and social context that must ground our understanding of the policy formations emanating from the Trump administration. And what is that context?
It is the denial on the part of elements in the Trump administration and the U.S. ruling class that the world has entered a transitional period where hegemonic power has shifted away from the U.S. and the “collective West.”
This detachment from reality has resulted in contradictory policies emanating from the Trump administration that have been both reckless and counterproductive to the interests of the U.S. desire to maintain global dominance. The overreliance on the use of coercive measures and various forms of state violence and subversion by the elements of the capitalist ruling class who represent the most aggressive elements of that class has failed to reverse the imperial decline accelerated over the last three administrations.
Washington Projects Its Drug Problem Onto Latin America
September 13, 2025
Roger D. Harris, Popular Resistance.
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DEA, Drug War, Latin America, militarism, Narcotrafficking, US Imperialism
A big Cadillac limo with Jersey plates was parked down the block. Few locals in East Harlem even owned cars, let alone new ones. Curious, I asked the street kids what’s up. They casually explained that the mafioso come weekly to collect their drug money. Later I found a playground, which served as a veritable narcotics flea market each night. If a blanquito from the suburbs and some third graders could uncover the illicit trade, I wondered why the officials – who plastered the city with “keep New York drug free” signs – couldn’t do the same.
That was in the late 1960s, and I am still wondering why the US – the world’s largest consumer of narcotics, the biggest money launderer of illicit drug money, and the leading weaponry supplier to the cartels – hasn’t resolved these problems.
Display Of ‘Humiliation’: Israeli Army Detains Over 1,000 Palestinians
September 13, 2025
Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss.
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Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Prison, West Bank
Israeli forces arrested at least 1,000 Palestinians in a single day on Thursday during a wide-ranging raid on Tulkarem in the northern West Bank, Abdullah Kamil, the governor of the Tulkarem area, told local media. The raid came following a roadside bomb attack on an armored Israeli military vehicle earlier in the day, taking place near a checkpoint outside the city. The attack wounded two Israeli soldiers, according to the Israeli army radio.
Kamil added that Israeli forces imposed a total closure on Tulkarem and conducted a campaign of home searches across the city, describing it as a “systematic policy.”
The explosion that targeted the armored vehicle as it exited Checkpoint 104, west of Tulkarem, was the first armed Palestinian action in the northern West Bank since the Israeli army forcibly expelled the residents of the refugee camps of Tulkarem and Jenin from their homes earlier this year.
Trump Forces Europe, Korea, Japan To Subsidize And Move Industry To US
September 13, 2025
Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy.
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Australia, Donald Trump, Europe, European Union (EU), Hyundai, ICE, Japan, South Korea, Trade, US Imperialism
U.S. cold warriors have failed to prevent Russia, China, Iran, and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) from obtaining their economic independence. That means keeping the fruits of their economic growth for themselves, rather than letting it be drained off by U.S. banks, investors, consumers, and the U.S. Treasury through the monetary dollar standard.
Washington’s cold warriors have been unable to stop SCO members from moving forward and becoming independent from U.S. influence. Recognizing that they are unable to prevent this, U.S. policy is focusing now on how to prevent Europe (especially Germany), Japan, and South Korea from becoming industrial rivals and hence threats — while also targeting China and BRICS.
‘Forever Wars’ Authorization Finally Repealed By US House
September 13, 2025
Stephen Prager, Consortium News.
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AUMF, Congress, History, Middle East, military spending, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism
Almost exactly 24 years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. House of Representatives voted this week to finally repeal a pair of more than two-decade-old congressional authorizations that have allowed presidents to carry out military attacks in the Middle East and elsewhere.
In a 261-167 vote, with 49 Republicans joining all Democrats, the House passed an amendment to the next military spending bill to rescind the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress in the lead-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War and 2003 War in Iraq.
The decision is a small act of resistance in Congress after what the Quincy Institute’s Adam Weinstein described in Foreign Policy magazine as “years of neglected oversight” by Congress over the “steady expansion of presidential war-making authority.”
Trinidad And Tobago Fishermen Fear Being Targeted By US Empire’s Strikes
September 13, 2025
Orinoco Tribune.
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Caribbean, Human Rights, Militarization, Trinidad and Tobago, US Imperialism, Venezuela
The Tobago Fishermen’s Association has expressed deep concern over the “deafening” official silence from Chief Secretary Farley Augustine regarding the recent violent actions of the US empire in the Caribbean Sea.
The recent attack on a small boat allegedly carrying drugs has generated fear among coastal communities. Fishermen now worry that future operations could mistake them for criminals, creating an atmosphere of fear and mistrust. They are demanding clear responses and safety guarantees.
President of the All Tobago Fisherfolk Association, Curtis Douglas, confirmed this Monday, September 8, that fishermen found debris believed to be from the destroyed boat washed into Trinidadian waters.
A Conversation With Leonard Peltier On His 81st Birthday
September 13, 2025
Levi Rickert, Native News Online.
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colonization, Indigenous Rights, Leonard Peltier, Racism
Tune in to Native Bidaské as Native News Online editor Levi Rickert talks with Leonard Peltier (Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians) who is celebrating his 81st birthday today. Released a federal prison this past February after almost five decades, it is his first birthday away from prison.
In 1977, he was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the deaths of two FBI agents during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota — a case that has since become one of the most controversial in American legal history.
On his last day in office, President Joe Biden granted Peltier a presidential commutation. Peltier was released on February 18 from a federal prison in Florida and flown to North Dakota. He is confined to his home on the Turtle Mountain Reservation.
It Would Be Fine To Help Make Mexico A Happy Place
September 12, 2025
Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
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AMLO, Anti-fascism, History, Mexico, Morena Party
When I was in graduate school, I audited a class taught by Friedrich Katz (1927–2010), one of the great historians of Mexico of his generation. During the Second World War, Katz’s father Leo was a journalist who was part of the anti-Nazi resistance in Berlin and later smuggled weapons from France to the Spanish Republic in its time of dire need. When the Nazis invaded France, Leo and his wife Bronia Rein – both Jewish communists – fled to Mexico, where President Lázaro Cárdenas’s government had opened its doors to anyone fleeing from fascism or who had fought for the Spanish Republic.
Friedrich Katz grew up in Mexico and remained grateful to the country for the rest of his life. In his seminar on the Mexican Revolution, he would regale us with remarkable tales about the ordinary people who overthrew the Porfiriato, the military dictatorship of General Porfirio Díaz (1876–1911).
The Martyrdom Of Charlie Kirk
September 12, 2025
Chris Hedges, Scheer Post.
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Assassination, Charlie Kirk, Christian Nationalism, Right wing extremism
The assassination of Charlie Kirk presages a new, deadly stage in the disintegration of a fractious and highly polarized United States. While toxic rhetoric and threats are lobbed across cultural divides like hand grenades, sometimes spilling over into actual violence — including the murder of Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband and the two assassination attempts against Donald Trump — Kirk’s killing is a harbinger of full-scale social disintegration.
His murder has given the movement he represented — grounded in Christian nationalism — a martyr. Martyrs are the lifeblood of violent movements. Any flinching over the use of violence, any talk of compassion or understanding, any effort to mediate or discuss, is a betrayal of the martyr and the cause the martyr died defending.
The Historical And Contemporary Role Of Neocolonial Caribbean Governments In Supporting US Militarism And Imperialism
September 12, 2025
Tamanisha John, Black Agenda Report.
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Neocolonialism, the Caribbean, US Imperialism, Venezuela
The Caribbean region is a clearly militarized zone with the United States at the helm. Today’s militarization in the region is reminiscent of the kinds of earlier iterations, also led by the US, from the 1970s to the early 2000s.[1] The US Trump administration reportedly carried out a missile strike in the Caribbean on September 2nd under the pretense of combatting drug trafficking in the region. Based on video released by the US, the military strike utilized a drone and/or aerial bomb to target a boat that allegedly departed from Venezuela – which the US State Department accuses of being a “narco-trafficking organization” and not a state[2] – and purportedly contained non-specified drugs and 11 unidentified human beings (so-called “narco-traffickers.”)
US Revisits ‘War On Drugs’ Routine With A New Target
September 12, 2025
Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza, Steve Lalla, and Sahely Chowdhury, Orinoco Tribune.
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US Imperialism, Venezuela, War On Drugs, Wars and Militarism
Venezuela has once again been in the international media spotlight due to the US naval deployment in the waters of the southern Caribbean Sea. This military deployment was officially announced by the US on August 14, but had been reported days earlier by the New York Times.
Under the guise of fighting drug trafficking and in parallel with the announcement of an increased reward for the capture of President Nicolás Maduro, the US regime has relaunched its “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela. The “bounty” on President Maduro has been doubled to US $50 million, and this time around, the US claims that the president of Venezuela is the head of the nonexistent Cartel of the Suns, the defunct Tren de Aragua criminal gang, and even Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel.