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.
The ability to afford basic needs and wants in line with living a “dignified life” in the U.S. is increasingly out of reach, new research finds, naming wage stagnation and soaring prices as factors driving unaffordability.
According to an analysis released by the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) last week, a “minimal quality of life” is out of reach for the bottom 60 percent of American households, or those with incomes of about $100,000 a year or less.
Researchers pinpoint stagnating wages and decreases in workers’ spending power as well as increases in costs as reasons for growing unaffordability. According to the researchers, the minimal quality of life has doubled since 2001, with 2023 seeing the largest single-year increase.
Israel To Allow ‘Basic Quantity’ Of Aid Into Gaza After Total Blockade
May 19, 2025
News Desk, The Cradle.
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Collective Punishment, Gaza, Humanitarian Aid, Israel, Palestine, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), United Nations (UN)
The Israeli government has approved the entry of “basic” amounts of aid into Gaza following three months of total blockade that has significantly compounded the humanitarian crisis in the strip, coinciding with the start of Tel Aviv’s new military operation.
The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on 19 May that the flow of aid is being renewed “at the recommendation of the IDF and due to the operational need to enable the expansion of intense fighting to defeat Hamas.”
Netanyahu’s office added that Israel “will allow the entry of a basic quantity of food for the population in order to prevent the development of a hunger crisis in the Gaza Strip,” given that such a crisis “would endanger the continued operation to defeat Hamas.”
Infrastructure Failure In The United States Of America
May 19, 2025
Kurt Cobb, Resilience.
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airplanes, Infrastructure, Transportation, United States
Recent events in America’s air transport system suggest that the system is becoming more prone to dangerous failures. Those failures include a January 29 mid-air collision between an Army helicopter and a passenger jet Washington, D.C.’s Ronald Reagan National Airport; a harrowing near miss between a landing passenger aircraft and an unauthorized business jet crossing the runway; a plane taxiing to the gate in Denver when an engine caught fire leading to the evacuation of all passengers, all of whom survived; and a blackout of air traffic controllers’ screens for 60 to 90 seconds at Newark Liberty International Airport.
A New Executive Order Gives Housing Discrimination A Leg Up
May 19, 2025
Brenda Castañeda and Moriah Wilkins, Next City.
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discrimination, Executive Orders, Housing, HUD, Trump Administration
Housing discrimination may soon get a boost. A new executive order from the Trump administration strikes at civil rights protections safeguarding some of our most vulnerable neighbors: communities with long histories of harm at the hands of federal policies.
Late last month, the White House banned federal agencies from using disparate impact analysis, a legal doctrine essential for rooting out bias and repairing damage from decades of discrimination. For years, Americans have pointed to disparate impact to challenge restrictive zoning laws, call out unfair tenant screening tools and desegregate neighborhoods.
Order To Expand Logging Threatens To Increase Climate-Fueled Wildfires
May 19, 2025
Curtis Johnson, Truthout.
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climate crisis, Donald Trump, Forests, Fossil Fuels, Logging, Wildfires
On March 1, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production.” The order claimed “onerous Federal policies” have hindered domestic timber production and that expanding logging was a matter of protecting “national and economic security.” It ordered the secretary of the Interior and head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), who oversee the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) respectively, to develop a plan to expand timber targets and streamline permitting “to suspend, revise, or rescind all existing regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, settlements, consent orders, and other agency actions that impose an undue burden on timber production.”
Sanctuary Cities And International Security
May 19, 2025
Robert Koehler, Counter Punch.
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Colorado, Immigrant Rights, National Security, Sanctuary Cities, Trump Administration
As Trump and friends claim control over the country, celebrating their war on migrants – “the enemy” of the moment, whom they’ve created and dehumanized – much of America writhes in shock and irony as it looks on.
The president who hates criminals is also our criminal-in-chief. But fortunately (for him), he’s above the law! Court rulings don’t apply to him – not when he’s busy keeping America safe from the boogeymen. To be an exalted leader, you need to keep a serious percentage of the populace in a state of simple-minded fear: The enemy are very, very bad people. They belong to gangs. They eat our pets. But I will protect you.
Chris Hedges: The New Dark Age
May 18, 2025
Chris Hedges, Scheer Post.
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Famine, Gaza, Genocide, Humanitarian Aid, Israel, Palestine
Cairo, Egypt — It is 200 miles from where I am in Cairo to the Rafah border crossing into Gaza. Parked in the arid sands in the northern Sinai of Egypt are 2,000 trucks filled with sacks of flour, water tanks, canned food, medical supplies, tarps and fuel. The trucks idle under the scorching sun with temperatures climbing into the high 90s.
A few miles away in Gaza, dozens of men, women and children, living in crude tents or damaged buildings amid the rubble, are being butchered daily from bullets, bombs, missile strikes, tank shells, infectious diseases and that most ancient weapon of siege warfare — starvation. One in five people are facing starvation after nearly three months of Israel’s blockade of food and humanitarian aid.
Israel Just Launched Its Offensive To Permanently ‘Conquer’ Gaza
Massive explosions shook the Gaza Strip in the first hours of Saturday morning as Israeli warplanes launched intensive airstrikes on north, south, and central Gaza, in what the Israeli army called “preparations to expand operations” in the Strip.
Israeli airstrikes hit Khan Younis, Deir al-Balah, several parts of Gaza City, and Jabalia. A resident of the Shati’ refugee camp in Gaza City told Mondoweiss that “the occupation army had issued orders to evacuate Shati’ camp, but they called off the orders — and then they called for an evacuation again, keeping residents in constant anxiety.”
“Then, yesterday night, they began bombing all over Gaza, including Shati’ camp,” the Shati’ resident added. “It lasted all night.”
US Reinstates Funding To Propaganda Outlet
May 18, 2025
Roger D. Harris and John Perry, Popular Resistance.
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CIA, Cuba, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Nicaragua, US Regime Change, Venezuela
The brief freeze and rapid partial reinstatement of National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funding in early 2025 helped expose it as a US regime-change tool. Created to rebrand CIA covert operations as “democracy promotion,” the NED channels government funds to opposition groups in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, meddling in their internal affairs.
In 2018, Kenneth Wollack bragged to the US Congress that the NED had given political training to 8,000 young Nicaraguans, many of whom were engaged in a failed attempt to overthrow Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Wollack was praising the “democracy-promotion” work carried out by NED, of which he is now vice-chair.
How NYT Reports On Weaponized Famine So You Don’t Have To Give A Damn
May 18, 2025
Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.
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Collective Punishment, Famine, Gaza, Genocide, Humanitarian Aid, Israel, Israeli war crimes, Media, New York Times (NYT), Palestine
More than two months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a complete blockade of aid—including food, water and medical supplies—from entering the besieged Gaza strip. It’s a severe escalation of Israel’s now 19-month genocide against Palestinians in Gaza—and what the World Health Organization (5/12/25) has described as “one of the world’s worst hunger crises, unfolding in real time.”
With no replenishing stock, aid groups have begun running out of supplies to distribute to families in need.
The UN Relief and Works Agency (5/16/25) reports that their “flour and food parcels have run out,” and that “one third of essential medical supplies are already out of stock.”
Trump’s Deals With Gulf Leaders Are An Explicit Act Of Feudalism
May 18, 2025
Aseel Saleh, People's Dispatch.
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Ceasefire Agreement, Donald Trump, Gaza, Iran, Israel, Neo-feudalism, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates (UAE), US military bases, US Sanctions
All eyes were on US President Donald Trump last week during his tour of the Gulf Arab states, with many hoping that his trip would speed up Gaza ceasefire talks and bring a permanent truce in the war-torn enclave. While the ceasefire is still out of reach, the trip proved to be one of Trump’s most lucrative business journeys ever.
Trump’s first major overseas trip in his second presidential term started on Tuesday, May 13 and ended on Friday, May 16, during which he visited three Gulf oil-producing countries, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Dr. Saeed Dhiyab the General-Secretary of the Jordanian Democratic Popular Unity Party (Wihda Party) criticized the heads of the Gulf Arab countries who hosted Trump.
Corruption, Lies, Biden’s Health And Trump’s Victory
May 18, 2025
Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report.
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Biden administration, Corporate Media, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Media
In 2020, this columnist and many other people observed that Joe Biden was not a healthy man. His confusion and his strange and angry outbursts, such as telling a voter who questioned his position on the second amendment that he was, “Full of shit,” are now legendary. Robert Hur, appointed special counsel investigating whether Biden had improperly held classified materials, not only described Biden as “an elderly man with a poor memory” but gave examples of troubling lapses for a man who was president and expected to run for office again.
“In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden's memory was worse.
Is There Really An Epidemic Of Workless Medicaid Recipients?
May 18, 2025
Matt Bruenig, People's Policy Project.
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Employment, Means Testing, Medicaid, Trump Administration
Today, I wrote a piece for the New York Times titled “Medicaid Work Requirements Are Cruel and Pointless.” The post below about Medicaid utilization in SIPP is an accompaniment to that piece.
The New York Times recently ran an opinion piece from RFK Jr. and three other Trump administration officials in which they argue in favor of adding work requirements to Medicaid, the health insurance program for low-income Americans.
At one point in the piece, they write that:
A recent analysis from an economist at the American Enterprise Institute examined survey data from December 2022 (the most recent month available) and found that just 44 percent of able-bodied, working-age Medicaid beneficiaries without dependents worked at least 80 hours in that month.
On The 77th Anniversary Of The Nakba And Israeli Support Of Genocide
May 18, 2025
Michael Steven Smith, LA Progressive.
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Genocide, Germany, Israel, Media, Nazism, Palestine, Zionism
Jew hatred in Germany, as compared to the Israeli hatred of Arabs, was not as intense or broadly supported.
The industrial murder of Jews was a late development in Nazi Germany. It was not that well known and took place mostly outside of the country.
The murder of Arabs is advocated by several Israeli war cabinet members who have publicly declared that they are fascists.
The genocide carried out against the Palestinians is not covered up. It cannot be. Not in the age of the Internet.
There’s a long-standing policy of Zionism to overwhelm and displace the native Palestinians. This goes all the way back to Ben Gurion.
South African ‘Refugees’ May Find The Grass Is Not Greener In America
May 17, 2025
Jon Jeter, Black Agenda Report.
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Donald Trump, Land Reform, Racism, Refugees, South Africa
Not much is publicly known about the nearly 60 white South Africans who arrived May 12, 2025, at Dulles National Airport in suburban Washington DC, fleeing what the Trump administration describes as racial discrimination and political violence from the country’s Black majority. But in classifying South Africa’s privileged white minority as “refugees” and fast-tracking their path to US citizenship, the White House, in typical fashion, overlooks a salient point which is that statistically speaking, South Africa is arguably the most comfortable place in the world for white settlers to live while the US is among the least.