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 September 2023, California passed a law requiring fast food restaurants with more than 60 locations nationwide to pay workers a minimum of $20 an hour, affecting more than 700,000 people working in the state’s fast food industry.
Readers will be unsurprised to hear that corporate media told us that this would devastate the industry. As Conor Smyth reported for FAIR (1/19/24) before the law went into effect, outlets like USA Today (12/26/23) and CBS (12/27/23) were telling us that, due to efforts to help those darn workers, going to McDonald’s or Chipotle was going to cost you more, and also force joblessness. This past April, Good Morning America (4/29/24) doubled down with a piece about the “stark realities” and “burdens” restaurants would now face due to the law.
The Eighth Continent Is The Continent Of Sleaze
December 13, 2024
Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
Educate!
Africa, Corruption, Global North, Global South, Imperialism, Neoliberalism
The eighth continent is the Continent of Sleaze. You and I have never been there, only heard rumours about it. On that continent, there are rivers of money in which corporate executives bathe and from which they extract whatever they want in order to increase their power, privilege, and property. The corporate executives venture out to lay their hands on the wealth of the world and carry it back to their Continent of Sleaze. What remains is dust and shadows, barely enough for people to survive so that they can continue to labour and produce more social wealth for the Continent of Sleaze.
The First Phase Of A New War Returns To Syria
December 13, 2024
Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report.
Educate!
Media, Syria, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism
Liberals and their Western allies, among the social-imperialist left in the U.S. and Europe, are celebrating the end of the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria after the stunning sweep across the country by so-called “rebels” led by the Al-Qaeda offshoot, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Their celebratory mood is informed by a tragic misunderstanding of what appears to be more of a coup d’etat in Syria than a military defeat. This was a coup orchestrated to replace the Syrian government with this coalition of Jihadists, which included the Turkish-supported Syrian National Army (SNA) and a coterie of depoliticized religious and gangster elements from the country’s Southeast.
Israel’s Genocide Day 433: US National Security Advisor Attends Ceasefire Talks
December 13, 2024
Qassam Muaddi, Mondoweiss.
Educate!
Ceasefire, Gaza, Genocide, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Wars and Militarism
Israeli forces continued their offensive inside Syria, which began following the collapse of Bashar Al-Assad’s regime last Sunday. Israeli troops breached the demilitarized buffer zone established in 1974 between Syrian-held and Israeli-occupied Syrian territory in the Golan, and occupied new positions in the Golan heights and on Mount Al-Sheikh.
Israel’s new advances according to reports included the occupation of nine Syrian towns in the Golan, where Israeli forces forced inhabitants to leave their homes and move deeper into Syria. Israeli tanks continued to advance, reaching up to 18 kilometers inside Syria, approaching the Damascus-Beirut international highway, at no more than 23 kilometers from the Syrian capital.
How The West Rebranded Al-Qaeda’s Jolani As Syria’s ‘Woke’ New Leader
December 13, 2024
Alan MacLeod, MintPress News.
Educate!
Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, Syria, Terrorist, US Imperialism
Corporate media is heralding the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the emergence of Abu Mohammed al-Jolani as the new leader of Syria, despite his deep ties to both al-Qaeda and ISIS.
“How Syria’s ‘diversity-friendly’ jihadists plan on building a state,” runs the headline from an article in Britain’s Daily Telegraph that suggests that Jolani will construct a new Syria, respectful of minority rights. The same newspaper also labeled him a “moderate Jihadist.” The Washington Post described him as a pragmatic and charismatic leader, while CNN portrayed him as a “blazer-wearing revolutionary.”
Trump Says No To ‘Foolish’ US Missile Attacks On Russia
December 13, 2024
Joe Lauria, Consortium News.
Educate!
Donald Trump, Long Range Missiles, Russia, Wars and Militarism
President-elect Donald Trump accused the Biden administration of “escalating this war” in Ukraine and “making it worse” by allowing U.S. long-range ATACMS missiles to be fired from Ukraine deep into Russia.
“I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia,” Trump told Time magazine in an interview published on Thursday. He said:
“Why are we doing that? We’re just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done. Now they’re doing not only missiles, but they’re doing other types of weapons. And I think that’s a very big mistake, very big mistake.”
Was South Korea’s Coup An Attempt To Restart The Korean War?
December 13, 2024
Ju Hyun-Park, People's Dispatch.
Educate!
Korean War, North Korea, South Korea, Wars and Militarism
As South Korea’s political crisis continues following President Yoon’s failed attempt to declare martial law on December 3, new details are emerging in the country’s legislature that suggest the full scope of Yoon’s coup plot may have included plans to trigger a “limited war” with North Korea. Planning documents circulated among accomplices prior to the martial law order also demonstrate that Yoon and former Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun looked to past martial law orders as precedents, including those issued prior to the Gwangju Massacre and the Jeju Massacre.
Behind UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Is A Larger System Of Corporate Rule
December 13, 2024
Derek Seidman, Truthout.
Educate!, Strategize!
Corporatism, health, Health Insurance, Profiteers, United Healthcare
The killing of UnitedHealthcare’s Brian Thompson — a brazen assassination of a wealthy CEO in the streets of midtown Manhattan — shocked the United States. But the tsunami of mass anger unleashed against a hated for-profit health care system has so far defined the story in the news. The killing sparked a deluge of personal testimonies of horrifying experiences with health insurance corporations. Dark humor around the shooting continues to flood social media.
Millions of people in the U.S. viscerally hate health insurance corporations, and see these companies and their CEOs as symbols of the worst kind of corporate greed.
The Centrists Cannot Hold
December 13, 2024
Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post.
Educate!
Centrism, France, Germany, Liberal class, Politics
A lot of us are familiar with these lines from Yeats’s thoroughly anthologized and often-quoted The Second Coming. How can they not come to mind as the French government of Emmanuel Macron, the centrist par excellence, falls in a heap of high-handed hubris?
Everyone in Paris is blaming everyone since the Macron government’s energized opposition in the National Assembly forced Premier Michel Barnier from office with a vote of no confidence last week. The truth is that Barnier is a casualty of his own political camp — an arrogant “center” that is not, in fact, the center of anything.
Letter To Refaat Alareer
December 12, 2024
Chris Hedges, Scheer Post.
Educate!
Israel, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, State Repression
We are not silent. We are being silenced. The students who, during the last academic year set up encampments, occupied halls, went on hunger strikes and spoke out against the genocide, were met this fall with a series of rules that have turned university campuses into academic gulags. Among the minority of academics who dared to speak out, many have been sanctioned or dismissed. Medical professionals who criticize the wholesale destruction by Israel of hospitals, clinics and targeted assassinations of health workers in Gaza have been suspended or terminated from medical school faculties with some facing threats to revoke their medical licenses.
Meetings At The Hague Reveal Crisis And Turmoil
December 12, 2024
David Kattenburg, Mondoweiss.
Educate!
Arrest Warrants, Benjamin Netanyahu, Congress, International Criminal Court (ICC), Israel, Palestine, The Hague, Yoav Gallant
The issuance of arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former War Minister, Yoav Gallant, on November 21, not only shocked the Israeli and U.S. establishment but also some of the 125 State Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who would soon be tasked with executing those warrants, once they’ve been certified and communicated to them by the Court Registry.
This past week, in the sprawling chambers of the World Forum Convention Center in The Hague, representatives of those countries gathered for the 23rd Session of the ICC’s Assembly of State Parties (ASP), the representative body that funds, governs, and supervises the implementation of the ICC’s founding treaty.
US Proxies In Syria Plead With Israel For Help
December 12, 2024
News Desk, The Cradle.
Educate!
ISIS, Middle East, Syria, Terrorists, Wars and Militarism
Kurdish militants in northern Syria have been reaching out to Israel for “assistance” after their villages were stormed by extremist groups who were involved in the assault that resulted in the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s government, according to a 12 December report by Hebrew newspaper Israel Hayom.
“Senior Kurdish militia figures are turning to Israel for urgent help, in light of the seizure of territories from them by Islamist militias backed by Turkiye,” the report said.
The daily added that the Israeli security establishment is deliberating on whether or not it should respond to these Kurdish requests for aid, highlighting there has been ongoing communication between Tel Aviv and the Kurds, which has increased since Assad’s government fell on 8 December.
The Dobbs Decision: Increased Black Maternal Deaths
December 12, 2024
Efia Nwangaza, Black Agenda Report.
Educate!
Abortion Bans, Abortion Rights, Black America, Black Women, Health Care, History, Maternal Mortality, Reproductive health
The Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2022, which overturned Roe v. Wade, has profound implications for Black women. The decision effectively removed the federal constitutional right to abortion, allowing states to set their own abortion laws. It denies women the human right of bodily autonomy, a cornerstone of self-determination.
The concept of “States Rights” emerged in debates over the balance of power in the U.S. Constitution (1787), a strong central government versus states' rights to guard against “federal overreach.”
US Healthcare Corporations Reap Profit From Human Misery
December 12, 2024
Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch.
Educate!
Assassination, Brian Thompson, Class Struggle, Corporate America, Corporate greed, health, Health Care, Health Insurance, Luigi Mangione, Medicare for all, United States
The assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on December 4 has sparked a reaction that few may have suspected. The perpetrator has received an outpouring of popular support, and a profound debate on the brutality of the US for-profit healthcare system has been sparked, with many accusing healthcare corporations of reaping their profits directly from human misery.
Thompson was shot and killed while heading to an investors meeting in Midtown Manhattan on December 4. Police have arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione in connection with the crime, who quickly has become a working class hero in the eyes of many in the US public, especially after his alleged manifesto revealed that he was motivated by outrage towards healthcare corporations.
Poultry Bosses Benefit From Trump’s Threats
December 12, 2024
Magaly Licolli, Labor Notes.
Educate!
Donald Trump, Intimidation, Poultry Plant, Worker Rights and Jobs
Even before he takes office, the Trump victory has given more power to poultry corporations. They’re using the political environment to intimidate workers. I’ve been organizing with poultry processing workers in Arkansas for 10 years, and I see a high risk that the (already awful) working conditions will get worse.
In some small plants, fewer than half the workers are documented. More than half are hired through a contractor who brings in undocumented people. They don’t get the same benefits, like holidays and overtime pay, and they’re paid less while enduring the same risks.