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Ukraine Timeline Tells The Tale

February 26, 2025 Joe Lauria, Consortium News. , , , , , , , ,
The way to prevent the Ukraine war from being understood is to suppress its history. A cartoon version has the conflict beginning on Feb. 24, 2022 when Vladimir Putin woke up that morning and decided to invade Ukraine. There was no other cause, according to this version, other than unprovoked, Russian aggression against an innocent country. Please use this short, historical guide to share with people who still flip through the funny pages trying to figure out what’s going on in Ukraine. The mainstream account is like opening a novel in the middle of the book to read a random chapter as though it’s the beginning of the story.

Black Prisoners Organize For Dignity In Angola

February 24, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , , ,
This Black History Month, Peoples Dispatch is exploring the history of the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary, the site of centuries of Black struggle—first against slavery, then convict leasing, and now the US prison system, which some label as slavery in the modern day. At the helm of the US’s notorious system of mass incarceration sits Louisiana State Penitentiary. Apart from being the largest maximum-security prison in the United States, this prison, nicknamed “Angola” after the former plantation site that it sits on, is an example of the conditions of modern-day slavery that the US prison system inflicts upon its disproportionately Black incarcerated population.

Malcolm X Presente!

February 23, 2025 ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
On a cold New York afternoon in Harlem February 21, 1965, “Don’t Do it,” were the last words that the world heard from the voice of El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, before the assassins opened fire with a barrage of bullets that would take Malcolm away from us physically. So we come every year to commemorate February 21, the day Malcolm was added to the long list of the great African anti-colonial fighters our struggle produced in the ongoing battle against the slavers and colonizers that spilled out of Europe in 1492 to stain human history with their unprecedented savagery.

We Want To Build Communities Of Readers

February 21, 2025 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , ,
There are days when the dusk of events settles heavily on me, and I try to find a way to retreat into a quiet corner and throw myself into the world of a book. It does not matter if it is a novel or a history book, as long as the author is able to conjure up a world that transports me from the flood of brutalities to an island of imagination. In recent months, I have been reading more and more novels – including Japanese crime fiction, a notable favourite – and finding in them characters with whom I can sometimes laugh and sometimes frown in bewilderment. Madness is not new to our world. It has been there before.

Meditations On The Notion That Obama ‘Never Had Any Scandals’

February 21, 2025 Caitlin Johnstone. , , , ,
Now that Trump is back in office I’m again seeing Democrats posting fondly about Barack Obama and how wonderful it was to have a president whose worst scandal was wearing a brown suit once. During the first Trump administration such sentiments were a great way to go viral on Liberal Twitter. And the thing about this genre of tweet is that they’re kind of right — Obama didn’t have any “scandals” of the level we see from Trump. But the fact that the evil things Obama did weren’t considered scandalous says profoundly ugly things about the kind of society we are living in.

Teaching Without Fear

February 14, 2025 Jim Mamer, Scheer Post. , , ,
More than four years ago I wrote a piece entitled “Patriotic History is Fake History,” in which I reported that then-President Donald Trump had insisted that we must teach our children “that they are the citizens of the most exceptional nation in the history of the world.” At the same time, he signed an executive order to establish a “national commission to promote patriotic education” calling it the “1776 Commission.” It would be based on the 1776 Report that was  released by the commission to promote “patriotic education.”

How Black Workers Overcome Historic Obstacles To Labor Organizing

February 13, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , ,
The struggle between Black organized labor and the political establishment has been historically waged with particular fierceness in the US South—a region with the highest proportion of Black workers but with the most hostile laws against workplace organizing. States in the US South have some of the lowest rates of union coverage in the country—meaning that they have a lower share of workers who are organized in a union. The national union coverage rate stood at 11.2% as of 2023, while the rate was as low as 3% in South Carolina, 3.3% in North Carolina, 5.2% in Louisiana, and 5.4% in Georgia.

122 Years Of US Imperialism In Guantánamo

February 11, 2025 Abraham Marquez, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , , , ,
Colonialist Christopher Columbus landed in Guantánamo Bay on his second voyage to the Americas in 1494. The empires of England, France, and Spain later disputed Guantánamo, a territory of 45 square miles. This “discovery” of the Cuban island unleashed a Spanish extermination campaign against the indigenous population, through disease, starvation, and brutality. What followed the genocide was the “vertiginous growth of the slave trade based in Havana”. Today, Guantánamo Bay remains occupied by the United States. It is used as a detention center by the most powerful military in history.

Trump Megadonor Escalates Campaign Against Freedom Of The Press

February 11, 2025 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , , ,
In 1964, the United States Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision known as New York Times Company v. Sullivan that further protected freedom of the press and speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Billionaire Steve Wynn, a casino tycoon and former finance chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), has now asked the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn this precedent. During the 2024 election cycle, he donated over $1 million to groups that supported President Donald Trump. If Wynn prevails, it would potentially open the floodgates to libel lawsuits against reporters, editors, producers, and news media organizations and have a chilling impact beyond what President Donald Trump has accomplished through his latest torrent of lawsuits.

US / Israel-Backed Overthrow Of Syria Was Blow To Palestine Liberation

February 9, 2025 Mike Miccioli, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , , , , , , ,
Opposition forces backed by NATO member Turkey launched an offensive in Syria, in coordination with Israel and the United States, on November 27, 2024. Within 11 days, the government of the Syrian Arab Republic was toppled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a group led by Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who now uses his birth name Ahmed al-Sharaa. Sharaa, who was appointed the unelected “president” of Syria, was previously leader of Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda. He was also an emissary of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the founder of ISIS.

‘Quantitative Easing With Chinese Characteristics’

February 9, 2025 Ellen Brown, Scheer Post. , , , , , ,
China went from one of the poorest countries in the world to global economic powerhouse in a mere four decades. Currently featured in the news is DeepSeek, the free, open source A.I. built by innovative Chinese entrepreneurs which just pricked the massive U.S. A.I. bubble. Even more impressive, however, is the infrastructure China has built, including 26,000 miles of high speed rail, the world’s largest hydroelectric power station, the longest sea-crossing bridge in the world, 100,000 miles of expressway, the world’s first commercial magnetic levitation train, the world’s largest urban metro network, seven of the world’s 10 busiest ports, and solar and wind power generation accounting for over 35% of global renewable energy capacity.

When Workers Resisted Labor Exploitation At Bronx ‘Slave Markets’

February 7, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , , , ,
Following the Great Depression, Black working class women flocked to street corners in the Bronx, New York, forced to sell domestic labor for far below its value in order to make ends meet. “They come to the Bronx, not because of what it promises,” reads the renowned exposé by two Black radical activists, investigative journalist Marvel Cooke and civil rights leader Ella Baker. These informal domestic workers flocked to the infamous “Bronx Slave Market,” “largely in desperation,” Cooke and Baker wrote in 1935. Desperation did indeed characterize the circumstances at the so-called slave markets, in which impoverished women braved the elements for hours, waiting to be exploited by wealthy families for a few cents and hour and risking all manner of dangerous working conditions and potential sexual abuse.

Panama Tries Compromise; US Says It’s Not Enough

February 4, 2025 John Perry, Consortium News. , , , , , ,
After intense pressure by the U.S. on Panama to return possession of its canal to Washington because the Trump administration thinks China is threatening it, the Central American nation on Sunday sought a compromise by announcing it would study whether or not to renew contracts with a Chinese company managing two ports on the waterway and would withdraw from China’s Belt and Road Initiative. The announcement was made by Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Panama City.

DOJ Finds Tulsa Massacre Was ‘Coordinated, Military-Style Attack’

February 4, 2025 Aaryn Urell, Equal Justice Initiative. , , , , , , , , , ,
The Justice Department issued a report Friday on the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921, when as many as 10,000 white Tulsans murdered hundreds of Black residents and burned businesses and homes to the ground in an attack that federal investigators found “was so systematic and coordinated that it transcended mere mob violence.” “The Tulsa race massacre stands out as a civil rights crime unique in its magnitude, barbarity, racist hostility and its utter annihilation of a thriving Black community,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement.

Trump’s Reign Of Terror On Schools And How We Fight Back

February 4, 2025 Eve L. Ewing, In These Times. , , , ,
The new presidential administration is enacting an education agenda the same way it is doing everything else: in a blitzkrieg, implementing sweeping measures as hastily as possible with little regard to their legality or feasibility. This rapid-fire assault — on trans youth who need gender-affirming care, on teachers who convey the basic facts of American history, on Head Start educators who need to make payroll—has a devastating material impact on countless individuals’ ability to teach, learn and feel safe in schools. Beyond these tangible consequences, the hailstorm of actions has a broader effect.
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