History

A History Of Foreign Intrigue In Lebanon

January 16, 2025 As'ad AbuKhalil, Consortium News. Educate! History, Lebanon, Regime Change, Syria, US Imperialism

Finally, after two years and two months of a presidential vacuum, Lebanon has a new president. Western media coverage misses the essential point about the presidency of Lebanon: after the reforms of the Taif agreement in 1989, officially known as the National Reconciliation Accord, the Lebanese president lost his powers. A look back at the history shows that the Lebanese president is now largely a token ruler who does not actually rule. Before the Taif accords, which ended the 15-year Lebanese civil war, the Lebanese president was an absolutist who couldn’t be held accountable for his actions and ruled by decree.

A New Military Strategy Of French Neo-Colonialism In Africa

January 13, 2025 Pavan Kulkarni, People's Dispatch. Educate! Alliance of Sahel States (AES), Anti-Imperialism, France, French colonialism, French troops, History, Pan Africanism, West Africa

In his New Year’s address, Alassane Ouattara, president of Ivory Coast since 2010 when he took power with the aid of a French military intervention, announced “we have decided on the coordinated and organized withdrawal of French forces” from the country. However, his address made no mention of terminating the 1961 military agreements with France. These “agreements are at the root of the problem. As long as these agreements exist, France will be able to use them to carry out military maneuvers or intervene at the request of its servants in power in Ivory Coast,” General Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Ivory Coast (PCRCI), Achy Ekissi, told Peoples Dispatch.

Dr Victor Frankenstein Disavows His Monster

January 10, 2025 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Donald Trump, History, US Imperialism, Working Class

Very few humans have had the good fortune to descend into the depths of the world’s oceans. The deepest such place – 11 kilometres below sea level at its deepest point – is the Mariana Trench, which is located just north of the 607 islands of the Federated States of Micronesia in the Pacific Ocean (by comparison, Mount Everest is nearly nine kilometres above sea level). Down there, in the depths below six kilometres in what is called the hadal zone, there is no light. It is called the hadal zone after Hades, the ancient Greek god of the underworld.

The Ghost Of Jimmy Carter

January 10, 2025 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! History, Jimmy Carter, US Imperialism

The late Jimmy Carter lived longer than any other U.S. president, passing away at the age of 100 on December 30, 2024. Like all presidents who only serve one term, Carter is generally considered to have been a failure after being defeated by Ronald Reagan in 1980. What is less well known is that ample evidence indicates Reagan and his associates planned what is known as the “October Surprise ,” which kept U.S. hostages in Iran and sealed Carter’s electoral defeat. Carter’s hapless ending was largely forgotten because of his good works with Habitat for Humanity and his eschewing of the typical post-presidential cashing in with corporate speeches and other forms of money grubbing among the elite.

The Common Ground Between Labor And Climate Justice

January 7, 2025 Pradnya Garud, Portside. Strategize! Climate Justice, Environment, History, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

A fault line runs between labor and environmental movements, or so we’re told. Labor unions have been criticized for focusing on jobs without considering environmental consequences, with some unions supporting controversial projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline, and others opposing bans on fracking. Meanwhile, environmental groups are accused of being divorced from working-class realities, sometimes neglecting lost employment and wages related to the energy transition. The urgency of cutting emissions and phasing out fossil industries to mitigate climate change has brought the seemingly contentious relationship between labor and environment into sharp focus.

Why Be A Doormat?

January 5, 2025 Owen Schalk, Canadian Dimension. Educate! Canada, Donald Trump, History, Sovereignty

US President-elect Donald Trump recently referred to Canada as the “51st State” and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as its “governor.” While on one level, such ridiculous statements are part and parcel of Trump’s political persona, they reveal something deeper about the role that Canada occupies in the American economy and political imagination. This is an issue that the Canadian Marxist historian Stanley B. Ryerson explored in a pamphlet entitled “Why Be a Doormat?” published by the Labor-Progressive Party in 1948. “Canadians need complete and permanent union with the US… Since Canada has shown that she cannot fiscally operate in today’s world, and since Britain is fiscally impotent, it is up to the US to act.”

The Panama Canal: From Teddy Roosevelt To Donald Trump

January 2, 2025 Workers World. Resist! Donald Trump, History, Panama Canal, US Imperialism

Just what is motivating President-elect Donald Trump’s threats to take over the Panama Canal, buy Greenland and make Canada the 51st U.S. state? Does he think he can impose a new historic era of U.S. domination, or is he simply following in the footsteps of his imperialist predecessors — Republicans and Democrats alike? During his first term, Trump’s “America First” policy was purportedly based on U.S. isolationism. Is his recent demand that the Panama Canal “be returned to us, in full, quickly and without question,” an indication his second term has emboldened him to assert U.S. interests abroad more aggressively?

20 Years After His Death, Gary Webb’s Truth Is Still Dangerous

December 31, 2024 Belén Fernández, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! Assassination, Gary Webb, History, Journalists, Media, Nicaragua

Twenty years ago this month, on December 10, 2004, former San Jose Mercury News investigative reporter Gary Webb died by apparent suicide, following a stretch of depression. The subject of the 2014 film Kill the Messenger, Webb had left the newspaper in 1997 after his career was systematically destroyed because he had done what journalists are supposed to do: speak truth to power. In August 1996, Webb penned a three-part series for the Mercury News (8/18–20/96) that documented how profits from the sale of crack cocaine in Los Angeles in the 1980s had been funneled to the Contras, the right-wing, CIA-backed mercenary army responsible for helping to perpetrate, to borrow Noam Chomsky’s words, “large-scale terrorist war” against Nicaragua.

Teachers Turn To Study Groups For Anti-Racist Learning

December 31, 2024 Jesse Hagopian and Ursula Wolfe-Rocca, Truthout. Organize! Anti-Racism, Education, History, Public schools

It is hard to overstate the burdens public school educators have been asked to carry over the last several years. There are the perennial stressors: inadequate funding, crumbling infrastructure, the inundation of schools with standardized testing, and too little time to plan, grade and collaborate with colleagues. Then came the COVID-19 pandemic: isolation, building closures, remote teaching, reopenings and severe staff shortages. Wielding the cudgel of “learning loss,” elites laid the blame for the traumatic impacts of a pandemic at the feet of teachers and public schools.

Remembering The Wounded Knee Massacre

December 29, 2024 Levi Rickert, Native News Online. Educate! Abraham Lincoln, History, Indigenous Peoples, Massacre, Wounded Knee

Today, we remember the one hundred and thirty-three winters ago, on December 29, 1890, when innocent Lakota men, women, and children were massacred by the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment near Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Some estimates place the death toll closer to 300, underscoring the horrific scale of this tragedy. The massacre occurred under the pretense of disarming the Lakota, who had already suffered profound losses due to U.S. policies, broken treaties, and forced relocations.

How A US President And JP Morgan Made Panama

December 28, 2024 Ed Vulliamy, Portside. Educate! History, JP Morgan, Panama, Tax Haven, US Imperialism, Wall Street

This goes back a long way. The Panamanian state was originally created to function on behalf of the rich and self-seeking of this world – or rather their antecedents in America – when the 20th century was barely born. Panama was created by the United States for purely selfish commercial reasons, right on that historical hinge between the imminent demise of Britain as the great global empire, and the rise of the new American imperium. The writer Ken Silverstein put it with estimable simplicity in an article for Vice magazine two years ago: “In 1903, the administration of Theodore Roosevelt created the country after bullying Colombia into handing over what was then the province of Panama.

Politically Corrupt And Morally Bankrupt

December 27, 2024 Helen Mercer, Portside. Educate! AFL-CIO, Anti-Communist, Book Review, History, Labor Movement, Worker Rights and Jobs

Jeff Schuhrke's book is a history of the collaboration between trade union leaders and the US state through the Cold War up until the 2000s. It provides a detailed account of the dealings of key figures in the leadership of the American Federation of Labour (AFL) and the Congress of Industrial Organisations (CIO) with the US political establishment and the CIA, earning the name “AFL-CIA.” Schuhrke exposes the labyrinth of personal contacts, committees, and associations through which the US government channelled funds and shaped labour organisations across the world.

Reflecting On The Losses Of Native Students At Boarding Schools

December 27, 2024 Levi Rickert, Native News Online. Educate! Children, History, Indigenous Peoples, Residential Schools

Just days before Christmas, Sunday’s Washington Post report revealing that over 3,100 Native students died while attending Indian boarding schools cast a sobering shadow over this festive season. The article is a heartbreaking confirmation of what Indigenous communities have known and carried in silence for generations. The Washington Post report, spearheaded by Dana Hedgpeth, a citizen of the Haliwa-Saponi Tribe of North Carolina, and Sari Horwitz, an investigative reporter and author of Justice in Indian Country, highlights the critical role of the media in truth-telling.

Deception And Politics From Washington To Tel Aviv

December 25, 2024 M. Reza Behnam, Consortium News. Educate! Gaza, Genocide, History, Israel, Palestine, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

In these difficult times, the voice of the late Palestinian-American scholar, Edward Said is ever present, “Writing is the final resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.” For more than fourteen painful months Israel has passed off its inhuman actions against the people of Gaza as “defensive.” We are to believe that the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians and attacks on its Arab neighbors are somehow Israel’s “right.” Championed by the Biden administration, Tel Aviv has grown ever more bold and barbaric in its efforts to crush the resistance and expand its “undeclared” borders; simply, because it can.

Many Wealthy Members Of Congress Are Descendants Of Rich Slaveholders

December 17, 2024 Neil K. R. Sehgal and Ashwini Sehgal, The Conversation. Educate! Congress members, History, Slavery, United States, wealth inequality

The legacy of slavery in America remains a divisive issue, with sharp political divides. Some argue that slavery still contributes to modern economic inequalities. Others believe its effects have largely faded. One way to measure the legacy of slavery is to determine whether the disproportionate riches of slaveholders have been passed down to their present-day descendants. Connecting the wealth of a slaveholder in the 1860s to today’s economic conditions is not easy. Doing so requires unearthing data for a large number of people on slaveholder ancestry, current wealth and other factors such as age and education.

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