https://znetwork.org/category/topic/politics-gov/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Thu, 26 Feb 2026 21:37:52 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cropped-Z_logo_512-32x32.png https://znetwork.org/category/topic/politics-gov/ 32 32 https://znetwork.org/zvideo/how-to-defeat-maga-tyranny-chapter-9-conclusion-endgames-the-power-is-in-our-solidarity/ https://znetwork.org/zvideo/how-to-defeat-maga-tyranny-chapter-9-conclusion-endgames-the-power-is-in-our-solidarity/#respond Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=video&p=1295220 As authoritarian politics harden in the United States, familiar channels of resistance are proving dangerously inadequate. Elections are constrained, courts are under siege, and dissent is increasingly met with repression in the streets. In this moment, questions of power — who has it, how it is exercised, and how it can be withdrawn — are [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/zvideo/how-to-defeat-maga-tyranny-chapter-9-conclusion-endgames-the-power-is-in-our-solidarity/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/even-when-there-is-the-worst-kind-of-repression-its-laying-the-seeds-for-opposition/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/even-when-there-is-the-worst-kind-of-repression-its-laying-the-seeds-for-opposition/#respond Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:55:45 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295199 Hi again, Hossam. Since the last time we spoke, you’ve become a doctor. That’s true. I finished my dissertation, and now it will be published by Verso. I’m really honoured to have a book with them that will come out this May. Maybe you can explain what the dissertation and book are about. It’s based [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/even-when-there-is-the-worst-kind-of-repression-its-laying-the-seeds-for-opposition/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/they-havent-even-started-spending-yet/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/they-havent-even-started-spending-yet/#respond Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:51:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295203 Politics is a good investment. For businesses, interest groups, and wealthy individuals, spending on politics offers one of the more attractive potential returns on investment you can find anywhere. For a one million dollar donation today, you can get the most powerful politician in the world to threaten your competitors or get the federal government [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/they-havent-even-started-spending-yet/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/will-mamdani-abolish-police-or-simply-make-them-obsolete/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/will-mamdani-abolish-police-or-simply-make-them-obsolete/#respond Thu, 26 Feb 2026 16:49:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295183 What sets Mamdani apart from other progressive mayors who promised to be tough on police is a democratic socialist vision of a society that meets people’s needs. As part of his proposed city budget for 2026, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani just canceled the NYPD’s plan to hire 5,000 more police officers, undoing a [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/will-mamdani-abolish-police-or-simply-make-them-obsolete/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/living-hell-israels-prison-system-as-an-instrument-of-oppression/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/living-hell-israels-prison-system-as-an-instrument-of-oppression/#respond Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:00:44 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295159 In January 2026, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem published a grim update to its earlier work, titled Living Hell: The Israeli Prison System as a Network of Torture Camps. This report documents the horrific conditions faced by Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and detention facilities, revealing structural brutality that must be understood not as [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/living-hell-israels-prison-system-as-an-instrument-of-oppression/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumps-2026-sotu-speech-economic-obfuscation-political-theatre/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumps-2026-sotu-speech-economic-obfuscation-political-theatre/#respond Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:58:52 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295158 Trump’s 2026 State of the Union speech was historic—but only in the sense of the longest ever at 1 hour and 47 minutes. Apart from that, the speech was one third misrepresentations about the state of the American economy followed by more than an hour of pure political theater which has come to increasingly feature [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trumps-2026-sotu-speech-economic-obfuscation-political-theatre/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cuba-under-siege-battles-u-s-oil-blockade/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cuba-under-siege-battles-u-s-oil-blockade/#respond Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:55:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295162 President Donald Trump on January 29 imposed import tariffs on any country providing Cuba with oil. The false claim that Cuba threatened terrorism against the United States served as pretext.  The U.S. Supreme Court on February 20 ruled that President Trump lacked constitutional authority for imposing tariffs. Now tariffs continue under different legal authorization. The oil [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cuba-under-siege-battles-u-s-oil-blockade/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-build-emergency-response-systems-for-the-long-haul/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-build-emergency-response-systems-for-the-long-haul/#respond Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:45:12 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295161 Targeted state violence and rising fascism are being met with creative organizing by people in Minneapolis and across the country, from mass marches to neighborhood mutual aid to ICE watch foot patrols. These are all beautiful manifestations of resistance that have kept many people safe and demonstrated widespread repudiation of the Trump administration’s policies.  Yet [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-build-emergency-response-systems-for-the-long-haul/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tax-the-rich-rally-in-albany-where-was-mayor-mamdani/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tax-the-rich-rally-in-albany-where-was-mayor-mamdani/#respond Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:42:46 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295156 Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of the “capital of capitalism” was a tremendous accomplishment and a blow to Zionists, Wall Street and Democratic Party higher-ups. Even The New York Times described his victory as a “surge of anti-establishment discontent.” Just a few of Mamdani’s frequent pre-election critical comments on capitalism include: Do I [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/tax-the-rich-rally-in-albany-where-was-mayor-mamdani/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-agents-bring-home-the-tactics-from-past-wars-abroad/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-agents-bring-home-the-tactics-from-past-wars-abroad/#respond Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:40:34 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295164 Last month, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers pulled over several cars in Eagle County, Colorado. They took the people away in handcuffs, according to a witness, and left the cars idling at the side of the road. When family members of the disappeared immigrants arrived, there was no sign of their loved ones. What they found instead [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-agents-bring-home-the-tactics-from-past-wars-abroad/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/francesca-albanese-is-a-powerful-voice-for-justice-which-is-why-the-israel-lobby-is-trying-to-silence-her/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/francesca-albanese-is-a-powerful-voice-for-justice-which-is-why-the-israel-lobby-is-trying-to-silence-her/#respond Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:10:07 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295160 Mark Twain and Winston Churchill are both purported to have once said that a lie can travel half-way around the world before truth has had a chance to put its pants on.  On February 7, Francesca Albanese, the current UN Special Rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, gave a short presentation by video conference to [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/francesca-albanese-is-a-powerful-voice-for-justice-which-is-why-the-israel-lobby-is-trying-to-silence-her/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/europes-new-asylum-rule-will-be-its-ice-moment/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/europes-new-asylum-rule-will-be-its-ice-moment/#respond Tue, 24 Feb 2026 17:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295116 Europe is about to normalise offshore asylum processing — and with it, a more distant and less accountable model of deportation. New EU rules will allow governments to fast-track claims by sending applicants to “safe” third countries – including places they have never even set foot in. This reform signals a retreat from the human rights-centred migration model Europe has [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/europes-new-asylum-rule-will-be-its-ice-moment/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/no-to-the-economic-suffocation-of-cuba/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/no-to-the-economic-suffocation-of-cuba/#respond Tue, 24 Feb 2026 17:01:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295131 For more than six decades, the United States has been suffocating the Cuban people by imposing anachronistic and inhumane economic sanctions. These measures affect the most vulnerable sectors of the island’s population, particularly the sick, children, the elderly, and pregnant women, and have a dramatic impact on all sectors of Cuban society. Retroactive and extraterritorial [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/no-to-the-economic-suffocation-of-cuba/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/organize-or-burn/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/organize-or-burn/#respond Tue, 24 Feb 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295139 At the time of this writing, Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is about to break 100,000 members, with nearly 14,000 of them in New York City alone. The election of Zohran Mamdani, a longtime DSA activist and New York assemblymember, as the city’s mayor brought unprecedented attention to the socialist group. Thousands of socialist activists have [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/organize-or-burn/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zohran-mamdani-wants-to-reclaim-efficiency-from-the-right/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zohran-mamdani-wants-to-reclaim-efficiency-from-the-right/#respond Tue, 24 Feb 2026 17:00:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295141 One of the core claims of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for New York City mayor last year was that government can and should work effectively and efficiently for the people it serves, with “public excellence” as one of the thirty-four-year-old democratic socialist’s guiding principles. Mamdani has repeatedly stressed the need to boost efficiency, enhance public services, and reduce [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/zohran-mamdani-wants-to-reclaim-efficiency-from-the-right/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/zvideo/lessons-from-minneapolis-mass-social-strikes-webinar/ https://znetwork.org/zvideo/lessons-from-minneapolis-mass-social-strikes-webinar/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 22:01:04 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=video&p=1295112 Organizers across the USA convened on February 16, 2026 to discuss the potential of social strikes in combatting Trump’s authoritarian juggernaut. Join us to learn about the history of social strike resistance to tyranny around the world; the lessons of the Minneapolis “Day of Truth and Freedom”; the role of organized labor; and how to [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/zvideo/lessons-from-minneapolis-mass-social-strikes-webinar/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/treason-at-the-end-of-the-world/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/treason-at-the-end-of-the-world/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:41:44 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295102 There are certain words polite society forbids. Genocide.Collapse.Treason. Say them, and you are hysterical. Extreme. Nuts. But there comes a point in the life of a civilisation when refusing to use the correct word becomes the real extremism. We are living through the greatest act of intergenerational violence in human history. The evidence is no [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/treason-at-the-end-of-the-world/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cuba-under-siege-mexico-and-latin-america-under-threat/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cuba-under-siege-mexico-and-latin-america-under-threat/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:32:52 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295099 Right now, 90 miles from our shore, the people of Cuba are facing the most extreme attack by the United States in at least a generation. The Trump administration has moved to choke off all remaining fuel access to the island. Venezuela and Mexico—the two countries that have supplied the vast majority of Cuba’s oil—have [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cuba-under-siege-mexico-and-latin-america-under-threat/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/action-alert-mothers-and-other-caregivers-statement-on-ice/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/action-alert-mothers-and-other-caregivers-statement-on-ice/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:27:26 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295094 As mothers and other caregivers, we are furious and deeply upset at the reign of terror being imposed on immigrants, our families and those standing with us. We are outraged at ICE’s cruel and brutal separations of children from their mothers and fathers. We have seen this tactic of breaking up families used in Black, [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/action-alert-mothers-and-other-caregivers-statement-on-ice/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/should-billionaires-have-it-all/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/should-billionaires-have-it-all/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:19:07 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295092 California politics is currently being shaken up thanks to a drive, led by the Service Employees International Union, to enact a one-time wealth tax on the state’s billionaires to offset federal cuts to healthcare and support public education and food assistance programs. Campaigning for the measure, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders told an enthusiastic crowd that [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/should-billionaires-have-it-all/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/europe-mutilation-insult-and-war/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/europe-mutilation-insult-and-war/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:58:39 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295085 Mutilation It all happened so quickly that few people noticed. In fifteen years, Europe went from being a large continent to a small subcontinent. In 2010, the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) was approved, the construction of which began with the Bologna Process (1999). It aimed to create a common system of easily readable and [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/europe-mutilation-insult-and-war/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/21st-century-common-sense/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/21st-century-common-sense/#comments Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:32:37 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295074 Rebellions against injustice and poverty go back centuries, millenia, throughout the world. People “on the bottom” of human societies, sooner or later, get themselves organized to put up a fight. Because of this historical reality, when it is combined with changes in consciousness and/or guilt among some middle- and even upper-class people, and despite our [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/21st-century-common-sense/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-collapse-of-the-state-the-birth-of-society-iran/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-collapse-of-the-state-the-birth-of-society-iran/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:24:21 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295069 ​What is happening in Iran is not a “crisis.” A crisis implies a state of temporary imbalance. In Iran, however, what is collapsing is not a temporary order, but a historical political ontology. ​The popular movement that began in Rojhilat (East) Kurdistan in December 2025 and spread to various Iranian cities has exposed the exhaustion [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-collapse-of-the-state-the-birth-of-society-iran/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-organize-safely-in-the-age-of-surveillance/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-organize-safely-in-the-age-of-surveillance/#respond Sun, 22 Feb 2026 14:15:34 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295057 Rarely in modern US history have so many Americans opposed the actions of the federal government with so little hope for a top-down political solution. That’s left millions of people seeking a bottom-up approach to resistance: grassroots organizing. Yet as Americans assemble their own movements to protect and support immigrants, push back against the Department of Homeland Security’s dangerous incursions into [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-organize-safely-in-the-age-of-surveillance/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-build-pro-worker-governance-in-cleveland/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-build-pro-worker-governance-in-cleveland/#respond Sun, 22 Feb 2026 14:07:57 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295053 While Zohran Mamdani was trouncing his opponents in the New York City mayoral election, Tanmay Shah, a twenty-nine-year-old Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member and South Asian immigrant, who ran on a platform of affordable housing, affordable groceries, and reliable city services, won the Ward 12 City Council seat in Cleveland, Ohio. It took three [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/how-to-build-pro-worker-governance-in-cleveland/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/lies-of-omission-as-fresh-american-war-crimes-loom/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/lies-of-omission-as-fresh-american-war-crimes-loom/#respond Sun, 22 Feb 2026 13:49:02 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295049 The US has amassed the largest military force in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq almost 23 years ago and is poised once again to commit mass murder and gleefully perpetrate an astonishing amount of war crimes. Yesterday a huge number of planes, from fighter jets to air-to-air refuelling tankers to command and [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/lies-of-omission-as-fresh-american-war-crimes-loom/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/israel-and-american-hawks-are-pushing-us-to-iran-war-with-catastrophic-consequences/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/israel-and-american-hawks-are-pushing-us-to-iran-war-with-catastrophic-consequences/#comments Sun, 22 Feb 2026 13:37:09 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295043  It seems clear that Israeli proponents of conflict in the Middle East, as well as supporters in the US media and politics, are determined to take America to war with Iran. This observation was forcefully stated by the global affairs analyst, Patrick Henningsen, who has recently returned from Iran.  The causes of the protests have not so [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/israel-and-american-hawks-are-pushing-us-to-iran-war-with-catastrophic-consequences/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/journalists-jailed-by-ice-are-revealing-the-horrors-of-incarceration/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/journalists-jailed-by-ice-are-revealing-the-horrors-of-incarceration/#respond Sat, 21 Feb 2026 18:35:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295010 For decades, corporate media and elected officials have shown little interest in reporting by incarcerated individuals on the unchecked inhumane treatment and deplorable conditions inside U.S. jails, detention centers, and prisons. But as a result of the Trump administration’s escalation of anti-immigrant violence and efforts to quell all dissent, professional journalists and writers, who normally [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/journalists-jailed-by-ice-are-revealing-the-horrors-of-incarceration/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/south-koreas-would-be-coup-leader-has-been-jailed-for-life/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/south-koreas-would-be-coup-leader-has-been-jailed-for-life/#respond Sat, 21 Feb 2026 18:35:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295014 The verdict is finally in. Yoon Suk-yeol, South Korea’s impeached conservative president, was sentenced to life in prison on February 19 by a Seoul court for insurrection. The court’s decision came 443 days after Yoon’s abrupt attempt to overthrow the constitutional order in a December 2024 self-coup. The effort collapsed within six hours as a [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/south-koreas-would-be-coup-leader-has-been-jailed-for-life/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-tripled-its-reliance-on-microsoft-in-last-six-months-leaked-files-reveal/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-tripled-its-reliance-on-microsoft-in-last-six-months-leaked-files-reveal/#respond Sat, 21 Feb 2026 12:59:49 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294994 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has relied extensively on Microsoft’s cloud storage and artificial intelligence products while escalating its campaign of mass arrests and deportations in recent months, files obtained by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian reveal. ICE more than tripled the amount of data it holds on Microsoft servers between July [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ice-tripled-its-reliance-on-microsoft-in-last-six-months-leaked-files-reveal/feed/ 0