Things are getting rather ropey on the invitation of Israeli President Isaac Herzog to visit Australia on February 8. It came amidst the anguish following the Bondi Beach attacks of December 14, 2025 on attendees of a Hanukkah event by two gunmen, leaving 15 dead. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese obviously thought it a sensible measure at the time. For months, his government has been snarled at by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for providing succour to antisemitism. The wretched thesis: that Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian State at September’s UN General Assembly meeting somehow stirred it.
Author’s note: This piece is dedicated to the memory of Angie Tibbs, who was a dear friend and also my editor at DV for many years. Her light still shines in the souls of the justice seekers and the peace makers to light our way through these dark times.
<p style=”text-align: left;”><i>It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. – Matthew 19:24</i></p>
I recently had the misfortune of seeing a video clip of Stephen Miller, one of the chief architects operating within the lawless Trump …
From an early age, most boys absorb the message—whether stated directly or modeled by the men and women in their lives—that to be a man is to be tough.
I learned that early. In my household, crying got me grounded or spanked, or both. And, of course, I was expected not to cry about the punishment. The older I got, the less that punishment mattered. I became numb to the pain, cut off from the hurt and sadness I felt. Eventually, I learned to express myself through anger.
In the community I grew up in, showing weakness in any form was frowned …
Black History Month: “The Dirty Business of Slavery.”
by Paul Haeder / February 3rd, 2026
“The Dirty Business of MAGA”
“The Dirty Business of Tech Fascism”
The Dirty Business of Billionaires”
“The Dirty Business of Axis of Evil: Israel/USA”
“The Dirty Business of ICE’s Slave Patrol Roots”
“The Dirty Business of Israelization of the World”
The phrase “our American Israel” comes from a Puritan expression of colonial American exceptionalism. In 1799, Abiel Abbot, a Massachusetts minister, preached a Thanksgiving sermon titled “Traits of Resemblance …
Imagine a train hurtling out of control, its passengers’ lives in peril. One traveler reaches for the emergency brake, only for others to disable it, dooming the locomotive to crash into a crowded town and claim hundreds of lives. What charges would follow? Under European criminal law, culpability hinges on intent, context, and motive—ranging from terrorism (requiring a deliberate aim to disrupt society, sow fear, or coerce authorities) to intentional homicide or gross negligence. Absent a political agenda, it might qualify as sabotage or murder. Yet, consider a parallel: what accountability befits a judge who disables the rule of law’s …
“Anthropause” is an amazing word and the latest book about it is an eye-opener. Stan Cox’s Anthropause: The Beauty of Degrowth (2026, Seven Stories Press), does what far too few degrowth books do – it first focuses readers’ attention to the positive experiences we could enjoy in a society less dedicated to producing unnecessary stuff. It then details the destructiveness of overproduction.
As the inside jacket describes,
In the spring of 2020, people worldwide found themselves confined to their homes due to pandemic lockdown orders. Global carbon emissions suddenly plunged 8.8%, bodies …
Here is just a very short guide for the concerned:
While you find little, or nothing, comprehensive, well-researched and meaningful in Western mainstream media, there are lots to be gained from every day visiting the online homes of, say, Al Jazeera, Al Mayadeen, the Middle East Eye — and others too, of course.
Visit also their social media outlets and video channels, mostly however on Google-censored YouTube, but still. And subscribe to their newsletters and updates.
Part I: The Schizophrenia between Representation and Mobs
by Bruce Lerro / February 2nd, 2026
You’ve always looked for leaders, strong men with no faults. There aren’t any. There are only men like yourselves. Speaking of leaders, they change, they desert, die. There are no leaders but yourselves. A united people is the only lasting strength.
— Emiliano Zapata, 1952, to his followers
In Yankeedom, the terms “liberal”, “democracy” and “capitalism” are all mushed together for political propaganda purposes. My article challenges this propaganda by pointing out that for most of its history liberals were cynical about democracy. Second, many capitalist societies are authoritarian not liberal. Third, there …
After ten years running a digital alt-news site in Western Massachusetts, I came to a hard truth: we’re not reaching the working class through podcasts, Substacks, or social media. This essay blends personal narrative with political strategy to argue that the American left needs to resurrect a forgotten tool of organizing and solidarity—the local print weekly. Drawing from my own experience building The Greylock Glass and now launching The Greylock Guardian, I explore how alt-weeklies once served as physical infrastructure for class consciousness, cultural resistance, and grassroots action. In the face of a collapsing digital landscape and rising fascism, it’s time to stop …
The UN is already on the verge of financial collapse. And we've just been watching its easy capitulation to lawlessness.
by Stuart Littlewood / February 2nd, 2026
On Thursday UK MPs will debate the motion “That this House has considered the obligation to assess the risk of genocide under international law in relation to the Occupied Palestinian Territories”. This follows an application from SNP MP Brendan O’Hara way back in June last year. As O’Hara said in his request, “it is to allow Members to have a better understanding of the Government’s reasoning and to examine how the Government’s policy impacts the United Kingdom’s legal obligation to continually assess the risk of genocide”.
He claimed there hadn’t been a proper debate on Palestine in the main Chamber since February …
Because 40% of Big Oil’s American sales are to the Big 3 auto companies, its beleaguered executives won’t go down to defeat by EVs without a last-ditch stand, even as carmakers like Ford desert and other factors.
by Barbara G. Ellis / February 2nd, 2026
Just as American consumers closed out the horse-and-buggy era at the start of the 1900s with the arrival of gas-run vehicles, carriage makers saw the handwriting on the wall and gradually moved capital, labor, and creative efforts elsewhere. Big Oil’s executives today certainly recognize that the gas-run vehicle era is fast ending once EV prices drop below $30,000 for working-class consumers.
A sign of these possibilities is that China’s BeteTek company is producing a BD-DB small $860 run-about model, for example, with a 53-mile range. The only EV that comes close …
The charter school industry has been operating in overdrive for several decades, trying desperately to convince everyone that charter schools are amazing, unassailable, and always in high demand.
But if charter schools are marvelous and popular why have charter school promoters spent years using top-down heavy-handed entities comprised of unelected pro-privatization individuals to impose charter schools on communities across the country?
Many, if not most, charter school laws state that the residents of a community must be consulted and their input must be considered in a meaningful way when unelected private citizens or …
How did he generate so much paperwork, traffic and comment? New York financier, mountebank, all purposes conman and dedicated rake that he was, Jeffrey Epstein continues to nag living figures from beyond the grave and place them in a tight spot of bother. His correspondence with these individuals runs into the millions, a figure suggesting his only work in life was being a pimp for pleasure and valet to the rotten.
The press vultures have been feeding most excitedly on the latest carrion released by the US Department of Justice on January …
A Jan. 17 article on Quartz Markets by Catherine Baab reports that JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America returned nearly all of their 2025 profits to shareholders. Goldman Sachs returned $16.78 billion on $17.18 billion in earnings, meaning 97.7% of its earnings went to shareholders. Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorgan, and Bank of America collectively returned tens of billions more. Across the six largest banks, roughly $100 billion flowed to shareholders in a single year.
"Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society." —Pedagogy of the Oppressed
by Paul Haeder / February 1st, 2026
The dichotomy between the social worker as a nine-to-five state agent and five-nine activist is a crucial one. The question can be summarised as: is there space, willingness and scope within social work to engage with broader structural issues that affect the lives of the people we work with?
I spent an hour with the Revolutionary Social Worker, who has a couple of Podcasts. Listen HERE NOW.
The radio broadcast comes to Lincoln County and Internet listeners on March 4, 6 PM, Pacific, over at KYAQ.org, 91.7 FM, my …
When remote islands start to interest chatterboxes in think tanks and bureaucrats in foreign ministries, we can only assume that some matters will be exaggerated over others. With the Chagos Islands, there is one matter that is hard to exaggerate. The plight of its indigenous population has been horrendous, treated with brutish contempt by the British and the United States, banished from their homelands in the name of strategic interests. As Britain and its strategic footprint passed into the shade of US power, it became vital that Britannia perform the vital role of servitor, always assured that it would be a …
Photo: Nuestra America gathering in Bogotá, Colombia. Credit: Progressive International
When Senator Tim Kaine told Secretary of State Marco Rubio at a recent Senate hearing on Venezuela that the administration’s announcement of a new Monroe Doctrine “does not land well in the Americas,” he was putting it mildly.
I just returned from an emergency gathering in Bogotá on January 24-25 with about 90 delegates from 20 countries, where speaker after speaker denounced the open revival of this doctrine — and its companion, the so-called Trump Corollary or “Donroe Doctrine” based …
Privately-operated charter schools fail and close every week. The top four reasons include declining enrollment, mismanagement, financial malfeasance, and poor academic performance. Such closures are usually sudden, abrupt, and take place mid-year, leaving many parents, students, teachers, and principals stunned and stressed about what to do next.
Currently, 69 students are enrolled in the K-12 Agnes J. Johnson Charter School (AJJCS) located in rural Weott in Humboldt County, California. The deregulated charter school was authorized by the Humboldt County Board of Education in 2019.
It’s just incredible how quickly and aggressively the US is advancing longstanding agendas of global conquest under the Trump administration. Now they’re racing to take out Cuba.
The US president has signed an executive order to impose new tariffs on countries that supply oil to Cuba, even indirectly, which is expected to dramatically increase the pressure on the already struggling island nation. This comes as the Financial Times reports that “Cuba only has enough oil to last 15 to 20 days at current levels of demand and domestic production” after the US cut off the supply from Venezuela, and …
Fighting against the current is always preferable to being swept away by it.
— Michael Parenti, The Terrorism Trap - September 11 and Beyond
by Michael K. Smith / January 30th, 2026
With the death of Michael Parenti, we have lost one of the greatest dissident voices in American history.
Parenti earned a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1962, and taught at a number of colleges and universities, never attaining a tenured position because he was “red-baited out of my college-teaching profession and left to survive on my writing and public speaking,” as he put it in his wonderful book Contrary Notions – The Michael Parenti Reader.[1]Unfortunately, this is rather common establishment treatment for those who not only write about politics and injustice, but stand up for the victims, …
An experiment in western China over the past four decades shows that it is possible to tame the expansion of desert lands with greenery, and, in the process, pull excess carbon dioxide out of the sky.
The sprawling greening project along the edges of China’s Taklamakan Desert is creating a visible and measurable carbon sink, even in one of the driest places on Earth, according to a study led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside. …
Another 1,000 word piece in the local weekly newspaper is yet another dust-up of the fascist policies of Trump, but also his deep bigotry, racism, misogyny
by Paul Haeder / January 29th, 2026
Forget about why I was at Samaritan-Corvallis’s ICU. The day before New Year’s, I had to undergo surgery THEN because of our failed health insurance mafia system. Samaritan Health Plan ended Dec. 31 at midnight.
While there, I gobbled up narratives of the people there: those doing the minute-to-minute care, and those doing the surgery.
Was I amazed at how professional the CNAs and custodial staff were? Was I impressed with the neurodiverse nursing staff and the compassion and the hard work and extended hours put in as healers?
… for nearly two decades, every evening in the week, the dean of American newscasters, Walter Cronkite, would end his CBS television news show with the statement: “And that’s the way it is.” On the eve of his retirement in 1980, Cronkite admitted that isn’t the way it is: “My lips have been kind of buttoned up for almost twenty years…. CBS doesn’t really believe in commentary,” he charged.
— Quoted in Inventing Reality, Michael Parenti, p. 7.
Michael Parenti joins a pitifully small number of US intellectuals who, when facing …
The term “scholasticide” emerged in the context of Israel’s long history of targeting Palestinian institutions of higher learning, culminating in Israeli forces destroying 95% of campuses and university buildings in Gaza from 2023 to 2025. We partnered with Taawon’s ISNAD program to document scholasticide and the determination of Palestinian scholars and students to resume teaching, researching, and learning.
Rory Fanning at the Great Lakes IL, billboard One of the VFP billboards. See them all here.
In response to the serial crimes ordered by the Trump administration in Minneapolis, Gaza and Venezuela, a national veteran’s organization is sponsoring billboards urging active duty and National Guard troops to “follow the law and their conscience” and refuse illegal orders.
In a now-famous video, Senator Mark Kelly and five other Members of Congress, all military veterans, boldly told active duty and National Guard troops they have the right and the duty to refuse illegal orders. “No …
Australia’s former Prime Minister and faithful Pentecostational conference on combating antisemitism held between January 26 and 27 at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, ambitiously titled Generation Truth.
The December 14, 2025 attack by two ISIS-inspired gunmen on those attending a Hanukkah event on Sydney’s Bondi Beach had supplied him with a hot script. Australia’s Albanese government had been previously barked at by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for going wobbly on Israel and soft on Palestinians. Morrison was in hearty agreement, claiming that the Labor government had “walked away from the Jewish state while antisemitism has taken root …
Faster, cooler, smaller, cheaper, they bypass US embargoes. And 2D fabs are 100% Chinese IP. The chip war we started is going as well as the Vietnam War after eight years.
China’s pilot production line for 2D semiconductors (atoms-thick materials like molybdenum disulfide) is a big deal¹, especially since no other country has a commercialized pilot or full production line for 2D semiconductors. The good news is,
Chips can keep getting smaller and better – Silicon chips are hitting their physical limits. 2D materials allow sub-1 nm. transistors, packing …
The U.S. government has the world’s most expensive military waging wars around the world. It also now has a military aimed at the United States itself. ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has a budget larger than any military in the world except 12. It has military weaponry and vehicles. It has military training from the U.S. and Israeli militaries. It has veterans of foreign U.S. wars in its ranks. The man who murdered Renée Good had learned to kill people in Iraq, for which he was almost certainly …
January 29, 2026, marks the second year since the Israeli military, using U.S. provisioned weapons, murdered Hind Rajab. Had she lived, this little Palestinian girl who liked to dress up as a princess would now be 7 ½ years old. An Israeli Defense Force unit fired a barrage of missiles at the car in which she and her relatives were fleeing from an Israeli military invasion of their neighborhood.
The family’s fatal ordeal began on January 29, 2024, in Tel al-Hawa, an area south of Gaza City, when Israeli forces …
Held between January 26 and 27 at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center and called Generation Truth, the second international conference on combating antisemitism was a picture of cracking contradictions. Organised by Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, it featured speakers from various far-right groups, many European, and saw Australia’s former Prime Minister and Pentecostal believer, Scott Morrison, address attendees. (The man is obviously touting for gigs.)
The attendance list caused problems prior to last year’s inaugural conference, not least because it included speakers from parties with memberships boasting neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. If this …
