https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ Independent Left News, Analysis, Vision and Strategy Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:41:52 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://znetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/cropped-Z_logo_512-32x32.png https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ 32 32 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/who-really-wins-from-the-us-critical-minerals-drive/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/who-really-wins-from-the-us-critical-minerals-drive/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:09:56 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295090 The global race for technological supremacy now runs on cobalt, lithium, rare earths, and coltan – the minerals that make possible everything from electric vehicle batteries to semiconductors and artificial intelligence (AI) systems. Rare earths, a group of 17 metals essential to electronics and defence technologies, and coltan, the ore used to produce tantalum for smartphones [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/who-really-wins-from-the-us-critical-minerals-drive/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/basis-of-class-struggle-must-be-recognized-by-working-people/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/basis-of-class-struggle-must-be-recognized-by-working-people/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 21:03:07 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295088 Distractions Currently working people are inveterately distracted with attacks on the Constitution by MAGA gangsters, thugs, and reprobates.  Another distraction is the heinous protection of the international cabal of rich men guilty of exploiting young girls in the Epstein criminal network. A third distraction is indoctrinating working people into supporting a glutted military budget while [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/basis-of-class-struggle-must-be-recognized-by-working-people/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/philanthropy-for-radicals/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/philanthropy-for-radicals/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:54:55 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295082 A review of The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended Americaby John Fabian WittSimon & Schuster, 2025, 736 pp. In 1922 the American Fund for Public Service received two requests for money from people who would become famous campaigners for labor rights and racial justice. One came from union [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/philanthropy-for-radicals/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-one-munich-to-another-but-what-security-are-they-talking-about/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-one-munich-to-another-but-what-security-are-they-talking-about/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:47:14 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295076 At first glance, everything separates the Munich Conference of 1938 from the Munich Security Conference of 2026. The former saw Czechoslovakia sacrificed on the altar of Hitler’s appeasement policy by the “great democracies” of Europe, which allowed this “appeased” Hitler to unleash the Second World War by invading Poland a year later. As for the [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-one-munich-to-another-but-what-security-are-they-talking-about/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/21st-century-common-sense/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/21st-century-common-sense/#respond 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/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/females-vs-citizens/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/females-vs-citizens/#respond Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:28:52 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295071 Around midsummer this year, my partner and I will welcome our first child into the world. I have thought long and hard about whether or not to say anything in this newsletter, committed as we are to our privacy. But, ultimately, it is becoming harder and harder to write every week without referencing our decision [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/females-vs-citizens/feed/ 0 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/ai-and-the-economy-a-losing-bet-for-working-people/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ai-and-the-economy-a-losing-bet-for-working-people/#respond Sun, 22 Feb 2026 13:41:29 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295046 ech billionaires and the Trump administration, with the apparent support of most of the capitalist class, are betting big on artificial intelligence (AI). In fact, AI investments have become the primary driver of US economic growth. But this is a losing bet for us. The AI boom is not sustainable. And because it is delivering [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/ai-and-the-economy-a-losing-bet-for-working-people/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/cubas-revolution-always-had-an-internationalist-spirit/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cubas-revolution-always-had-an-internationalist-spirit/#respond Sun, 22 Feb 2026 13:32:40 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295040 Last month, there was an event in Havana to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Tricontinental Conference, a major international gathering held in the Cuban capital between January 3 and 13, 1966. This came just as the standoff between the United States and Venezuela escalated dramatically, with US troops seizing President Nicolás Maduro, killing all [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/cubas-revolution-always-had-an-internationalist-spirit/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-administration-gives-blessing-for-israel-to-restore-the-empire-of-kind-david-from-the-river-to-the-sea/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-administration-gives-blessing-for-israel-to-restore-the-empire-of-kind-david-from-the-river-to-the-sea/#respond Sun, 22 Feb 2026 13:25:48 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295038 Mike Huckabee, the United States ambassador to Israel, has suggested that he would not object if Israel were to take most of the Middle East, stressing what he described as the Jewish people’s right to the land.  In a recent interview with a conservative commentator, Huckabee was pressed about the geographical borders of Israel, which [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/trump-administration-gives-blessing-for-israel-to-restore-the-empire-of-kind-david-from-the-river-to-the-sea/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/doj-released-much-more-on-epsteins-israel-ties-but-media-still-arent-much-interested/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/doj-released-much-more-on-epsteins-israel-ties-but-media-still-arent-much-interested/#respond Sun, 22 Feb 2026 13:19:28 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295026 Late last month, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) published 3.5 million pages about convicted sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein. On top of the grotesque and horrifying photos and emails that appear to offer more evidence of systemic and widespread child abuse, the Epstein files revealed further allegations of his ties to Israel and its intelligence agency Mossad. The Epstein/Israel [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/doj-released-much-more-on-epsteins-israel-ties-but-media-still-arent-much-interested/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-goes-up-must-come-down/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-goes-up-must-come-down/#respond Sun, 22 Feb 2026 13:01:18 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295023 New research published Thursday bolsters growing concerns that a handful of companies and countries are using the global atmospheric commons as a dumping ground for potentially toxic and climate-altering industrial waste byproducts from loosely regulated commercial space flights. The new study analyzed a plume of pollution trailing part of a Falcon rocket that crashed through the upper [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/what-goes-up-must-come-down/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/lancet-study-shows-75000-killed-violently-in-first-16-months-of-israels-genocide-far-more/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/lancet-study-shows-75000-killed-violently-in-first-16-months-of-israels-genocide-far-more/#respond Sat, 21 Feb 2026 18:35:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295004 A peer-reviewed study published Wednesday in The Lancet Global Health estimates that more than 75,000 people in Gaza were killed during the first 16 months of Israel’s genocidal assault—a figure that far exceeds the death toll reported at the time by the strip’s health authorities. The study’s authors found that there were 75,200 “violent deaths” in Gaza between October 7, 2023 [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/lancet-study-shows-75000-killed-violently-in-first-16-months-of-israels-genocide-far-more/feed/ 0 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/rubio-declared-a-return-to-brutal-western-colonialism-and-europe-applauded/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/rubio-declared-a-return-to-brutal-western-colonialism-and-europe-applauded/#respond Sat, 21 Feb 2026 18:35:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295012 US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s speech at the Munich Security Conference last weekend was another troubling declaration of intent by the Trump administration. The explicit goal of US foreign policy, according to Rubio, is to resurrect the western colonial order that persisted for some five centuries until the Second World War. Old-school, white-man’s-burden colonialism is unapologetically back. In [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/rubio-declared-a-return-to-brutal-western-colonialism-and-europe-applauded/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-power-of-power-structure-research/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-power-of-power-structure-research/#comments Sat, 21 Feb 2026 13:32:29 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1295001 Today, it’s almost taken for granted that activist campaigns and organizing drives, including within the labor movement, have some form of a power research component to help shape strategy and tactics. But this wasn’t always the case.  In the 1960s, power structure research — which maps who holds power in society, how those entities are [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-power-of-power-structure-research/feed/ 1 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/austerity-and-unrest-in-bolivia/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/austerity-and-unrest-in-bolivia/#respond Sat, 21 Feb 2026 13:10:13 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294997 One in three of the first 100 days of the new Bolivian government, headed up by Rodrigo Paz and his vice president, Edmand Lara, has passed in a climate of open conflict. Blockades escalated to the point of paralyzing the country, with mass demonstrations, primarily by mining unions and public school teachers, converging on La [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/austerity-and-unrest-in-bolivia/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 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-tehran-to-gaza-frontlines-of-resistance/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-tehran-to-gaza-frontlines-of-resistance/#respond Fri, 20 Feb 2026 17:31:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294976 Forty-seven years ago, after a millennia of monarchical rule, Iran reinvented its political system. The Islamic Republic was birthed by the Revolution of 1979; considered one of the most consequential historical events of modern times.  The Iranian Revolution profoundly altered the geopolitical landscape of West Asia. By removing the Shah, Iranians severed one pillar of [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/from-tehran-to-gaza-frontlines-of-resistance/feed/ 0 https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-us-appears-likely-to-attack-iran-again-we-must-stop-this-illegal-act/ https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-us-appears-likely-to-attack-iran-again-we-must-stop-this-illegal-act/#respond Fri, 20 Feb 2026 17:31:00 +0000 https://znetwork.org/?post_type=znetarticle&p=1294966 President Donald Trump seems to think he is King of the World, not just the United States. Even as he convenes his “Board of Peace” (“Board of Imperial Conquest” would be more apt) it looks like the US will soon illegally attack Iran, again, as it did last June. Congress needs to do its job [...]]]> https://znetwork.org/znetarticle/the-us-appears-likely-to-attack-iran-again-we-must-stop-this-illegal-act/feed/ 0