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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.

The Western Way Of Genocide

February 3, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , ,
Gaza is a wasteland of 50 million tons of rubble and debris. Rats and dogs scavenge amid the ruins and fetid pools of raw sewage. The putrid stench and contamination of decaying corpses rises from beneath the mountains of shattered concrete. There is no clean water. Little food. A severe shortage of medical services and hardly any habitable shelters. Palestinians risk death from unexploded ordnance, left behind after over 15 months of air strikes, artillery barrages, missile strikes and blasts from tank shells, and a variety of toxic substances, including pools of raw sewage and asbestos.

Settler Colonialism: ‘It Ends With Us’ In Palestine And Israel

February 2, 2025 Richard D. Wolff, Counter Punch. , , , ,
My birth emerged from European capitalism’s fascistic catastrophe in the 1920s–1940s. That catastrophe also produced Israel’s experiment with settler colonialism in Palestine. This article refers to both these incidents to analyze the current Palestine-Israel catastrophe. My reasons or qualifications to write such an article start with the fact that my maternal grandmother and grandfather were killed at the Nazis’ Mauthausen concentration camp. My father’s sister was killed in Auschwitz. My mother and her sister spent years in different concentration camps. Because of these events, my parents fled Europe and started a family in the United States.

Trump’s Education Agenda For Teachers

January 26, 2025 Jesse Hagopian, Truthout. , , , ,
“Getting critical race theory out of our schools is not just a matter of values, it’s also a matter of national survival,” Donald Trump railed at a rally in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. “We have no choice, the fate of any nation ultimately depends upon the willingness of its citizens to lay down — and they must do this — lay down their very lives to defend their country.” This is more than political theater — it’s a clarion call to enforce, by any means necessary, what can only be called “post-truth schooling,” a system where ideological conformity replace inquiry and objective truth as the foundation of education.

A Major Milestone In Socialist History

January 23, 2025 Gabriel Rockhill, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
One of the most legendary scenes of revolutionary joy in the history of the world socialist movement is said to have occurred when Vladimir Lenin reportedly went out to dance in the snow in order to celebrate the fact that the recently minted Soviet Republic had outlasted the Paris Commune. The workers who had taken over the French capital in 1871 and launched a collective project of self-governance were able to hold out for seventy-two days before the ruling class trounced this experiment in a more egalitarian world.

Running In Circles On Racial Justice

January 21, 2025 Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler, LA Progressive. , , ,
We keep running in circles when it comes to addressing racial justice in the US. This means that with every advance we almost come back to the same place and must fight the battles all over again. It doesn't mean that progress has not been made, but the progress retrogresses due to the immediate backlash that charges any advance to rectify past racial injustices as an affront to white people. At best there is an ebb and flow when it comes to rectifying the racial harms and damages of the past. Race history and the many initiatives to rectify past wrongs are more of a circle than a linear line.

A History Of Foreign Intrigue In Lebanon

January 16, 2025 As'ad AbuKhalil, Consortium News. , , , ,
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. , , , , , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , ,
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. , , , ,
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. , , ,
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. , , ,
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?
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