Trump International Hotel and Tower, Gaza

By Vijay Prashad

February 14, 2025

Source: Globetrotter

Palestinians return to their homes destroyed by israeli airstrikes to try to salvage food, supplies, and possessions following the withdrawal of israeli forces from parts of Khan Younis. (Photo: Bashar taleb/APA images)

Donald Trump spoke to reporters for over three hours on Air Force One on his way to see the Super Bowl in New Orleans on 9 February 2025. It was not clear to the reporters who broadcast his comments whether Trump was speaking as the President of the United States, a member of the United Nations, or as a real estate magnate. Gaza, he said, is a “demolition site” that needed to be “leveled out” and “fixed up”. Since Gaza is on the Mediterranean Sea, Trump said, it could be developed into a new French Riviera. According to him, it is not the crime scene of a genocide but “a big real estate site”. The United States, he said with his presidential smile on, “will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it too”.

Palestinians from Gaza listening to this commentary could have imagined that the United States would be funding the reconstruction of Gaza, which has been estimated by the United Nations to be – at a minimum – $53 billion (the cost after the 2014 pulverization of Gaza by Israel was $2.4 billion). In 2023, total US Overseas Development Aid was $66 billion, and, with the cuts proclaimed by President Trump, it is unlikely that the US can muster anything near the bill for the reconstruction of Gaza. There was nothing humanitarian in Trump’s comments about the making of the Gaza Riviera (or since this appears to be a gift to Israel, it is more likely that Trump imagines it to be the Azzah Riviera, using the Zionist name for Gaza, meaning “strong city”). The Israeli establishment has, from the start of this genocidal campaign, said that it wants to annex Gaza, which seems to be aligned with the Trump vision to make Gaza American or to develop Gaza as a beachside resort for U.S. tourists and Israeli settlers. Knowing Trump, he will likely want to reserve a section of the beachfront for himself and to build a Trump International Hotel and Tower that has a casino attached to it for good measure.
Zionist Gentrification

None of this is a surprise and nor are these ideas original to Trump. The entire Zionist project imagines an Eretz Israel that stretches from the borders with Egypt to that of Iran. The real estate deed for this is a line in the Bible, “To your descendants, I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river the Euphrates” (Genesis 15:18). It is not clear which river in Egypt this line refers to, whether the Nile or Wadi el-Arish (in the Sinai Peninsula). But if the Euphrates is taken as its border, then the land that Zionists claim includes the entire West Bank and Jerusalem, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and the western half of Iraq. There are maps of this kind that can be seen in the offices of far-right Israeli politicians (on 19 March, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich spoke in Paris from a podium that displayed an Israeli map that included Jordan). This is utterly normal in the world of the illegal settlements in the West Bank (part of the UN-mandated Occupied Palestine Territory), which the settlers call Judea and Samaria. Their geography has been different since at least when their spiritual guide Ze’ev Jabotinsky wrote in The Iron Wall(1923) that Zionists must build Eretz Israel behind an “iron wall, which is to say a strong power in Palestine that is not amenable to any Arab pressure”.

Trump is not much of a reader. He probably has never heard of Jabotinsky or of Theodor Herzl. He probably cannot define Zionism. But he knows a real estate opportunity when he sees one, and that is how he has understood his solution to the problems facing Israel. In his first term, Trump made the “deal of the century”, the Abraham Accords, which brought a series of states to normalize relations with Israel: Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (September 2020), Sudan (October 2020), and Morocco (December 2020). With Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994) having already made peace deals with Israel, the map had begun to shift away from the Palestinians and toward the Israelis. The new governments in Lebanon and Syria are not far from making their own separate agreements, and Saudi Arabia has already said that it would normalize with Tel Aviv. Trump is a “bazaari” (marketplace) politician, one who tosses outlandish agreements in the air (for Morocco, the acceptance of its illegal occupation of Western Sahara) in utter disregard for international law. He is now doing the same with Gaza.

“I think that it’s a big mistake to allow people – the Palestinians, or the people living in Gaza – to go back yet another time”, he said on Air Force One. “We don’t want Hamas going back”, Trump said. “The United States is going to own it”. It did not take long for all the UN Special Rapporteurs to sign a strong letter condemning Trump’s comments. They made the correct argument that his idea, if implemented, is a war crime. Trump does not understand international law. He thinks like a gentrifier. This is what he has been doing across the United States: evicting ordinary people and building hideous buildings as a monument to the fabulous wealth of the few. Trump, like the illegal settlers, conducts Zionist gentrification.
Silence

Marwan Bardawil is an engineer with the Palestinian Water Authority. At a little-noticed press conference in Ramallah, Palestine, Bardawil said that 85% of the water and sewage facilities in the Gaza Strip were destroyed by the Israeli genocide. It will cost $1 billion to repair and replace the water and sewage facilities in Gaza. Polio, which was eradicated in Gaza a quarter of a century ago, has returned because of the collapse of the water system.

The Palestinians are being silenced as the debate around Gaza unfolds. If they want a Trump International Hotel and Tower, that is up to them, not up to Trump or Netanyahu. But they are not clamouring for a golden tower. What they want are their homes. And their universities. And their hospitals. And the photographs of their family members who are now all dead.



Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power. Tings Chak is the art director and a researcher at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and lead author of the study “Serve the People: The Eradication of Extreme Poverty in China.” She is also a member of Dongsheng, an international collective of researchers interested in Chinese politics and society.

The Gaza Genocide and the Unravelling of US Hegemony

By Nasim Ahmed

February 15, 2025

Source: Middle East Monitor


“Ropes of Sand,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2025



Israel’s war on Gaza has shattered whatever illusions remained about the strength of US hegemony in the Middle East. The essays in a recent study “Debating American Primacy in the Middle East” bring into sharp focus the extent to which the US funded Israeli genocide in Gaza has accelerated global shifts in power, exposing the limits of Washington’s influence and leaving a vacuum that other actors are eagerly filling. The past 16 months, argue the authors, have not only exposed deep fractures in US alliances but also demonstrated the sheer exhaustion of the post-World War II order that once allowed America to dictate the region’s future. What was once an uncontested US-led system is now riddled with challenges from regional and global actors who are increasingly willing to defy American dictates.

According to the study, US primacy in the Middle East has never rested on military force alone. Its dominance was built on a mix of coercion, economic leverage, and the carefully maintained illusion of a liberal international order—one supposedly grounded in rules, institutions and multilateral diplomacy. But Israel’s aggression in Gaza has stripped away this façade, exposing a glaring double standard. The US, which has long positioned itself as a global defender of democracy and human rights, has instead found itself justifying and enabling an ally engaged in actions that violate the very principles it claims to uphold. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that Israel’s actions plausibly constitute genocide has put Washington in a position of unprecedented moral and political isolation. Rather than reassess its stance, the US has blocked ceasefire resolutions at the UN and continued to supply weapons, demonstrating that its commitment to “rules-based order” applies only when it serves American interests.

For decades, Washington’s closest Arab allies — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and the UAE — have maintained their alignment with the US in exchange for security guarantees. But, as the study details, this arrangement is becoming harder to sustain. The assault on Gaza has ignited public anger across the Arab world at a level not seen since the early days of the Arab Spring, forcing even the most US-aligned governments to reconsider their positions. Jordan, historically one of America’s most reliable partners, took the extraordinary step of supporting the ICJ case against Israel. Saudi Arabia, which had been moving towards normalising ties with Israel under US mediation, has now been forced to shelve those plans indefinitely. The authors of the study argue that the US, once seen as the key regional power broker, is rapidly losing credibility as a mediator, let alone a hegemon.

One of the most striking points made in the study is the extent to which Washington’s commitment to Israel’s security has transformed from a strategic calculation into an ideological fixation — one that no longer serves even Israel’s interests. Far from ensuring its long-term security, US support has helped push Israel into deeper isolation. Since 7 October 2023, Israel has framed its assault on Gaza as an existential fight, but rather than eliminating Hamas, the war has instead made Gaza a global symbol of Western hypocrisy, strengthened resistance movements across the region and increased instability.

The study also points to the impact on America’s traditional alliances in Europe. While European governments have largely followed Washington’s lead in backing Israel, public opinion has shifted dramatically. The scale of destruction in Gaza has mobilised widespread protests and forced European leaders — many of whom have historically been staunchly pro-Israel — to adopt a more critical tone. This marks a significant break from previous US-European relations. For decades, the transatlantic alliance has been a key pillar of US global primacy, yet the study argues that Washington’s handling of Gaza has shown that it can no longer rely on automatic European backing. The Biden administration’s failure to secure a ceasefire despite months of mounting pressure has exposed the limits of its influence, not just over Israel but over its own allies.

Beyond the immediate diplomatic fallout, the study suggests that the broader consequences of this moment will reshape global power structures. The US dollar’s dominance in global trade and the influence of American-led financial institutions are already being challenged, with countries actively seeking ways to reduce their economic dependence on Washington. The BRICS alliance, which includes China, Russia and key Global South economies, is gaining momentum, with several Middle Eastern states expressing interest in closer ties. The study argues that if US primacy means unconditional support for Israel at any cost, then alternative global alignments will only become more attractive.

What emerges from this analysis is not the immediate collapse of US hegemony, but its gradual and highly visible erosion. The US remains a powerful actor, but the study makes it clear that Washington can no longer dictate terms as it once did. Arab states that were once deeply embedded in the American security architecture are actively diversifying their partnerships, strengthening ties with China, Russia and even Iran. The security arrangements that underpinned US dominance in the region for decades are now being renegotiated, with Washington struggling to keep up.

Perhaps nowhere is this shift more apparent than in the failure of the Abraham Accords to withstand the fallout from Gaza. The accords were designed to cement Israel’s integration into a US-backed regional order, but the ongoing assault has rendered them meaningless. Arab states that had normalised ties with Israel, such as the UAE and Bahrain, now find themselves having to publicly distance themselves from its actions. Saudi Arabia, once the key target for US-led normalisation efforts, has decisively stepped back. The study argues that the belief that Israel could maintain these deals while waging an all-out assault on Gaza was always unrealistic — and the events of the past year have confirmed that the future of the region will not be shaped by US-brokered backroom agreements but by the realities of power on the ground.

The study also highlights the internal impact on Israel itself, arguing that the Gaza assault has had devastating consequences not just for Palestinians but for Israeli democracy. The far-right government of Benjamin Netanyahu has used the crisis to push through increasingly authoritarian measures, suppressing dissent, targeting political opponents and further entrenching an anti-democratic state. For years, Israel’s defenders have justified US support by portraying it as “the only democracy in the Middle East,” yet its current trajectory calls that claim into question.

For Palestinians, the study makes clear that the ongoing assault has not just deepened their suffering — it has exposed the complete failure of US-backed diplomatic efforts. The Palestinian Authority, long seen as Washington’s preferred mechanism for managing the occupation, has lost whatever legitimacy it once had. As the study’s authors argue, the idea that a US-led peace process will deliver a just solution to the conflict is now as outdated as the assumption that Washington still has the power to unilaterally shape the region’s future.

The world that is emerging in the wake of Gaza genocide is one in which US dominance can no longer be taken for granted. Regional actors are asserting themselves, often in direct defiance of Washington’s goals. The global order that once revolved around American primacy is steadily shifting — not through dramatic upheavals, but through the cumulative weight of lost influence, realigned alliances, and a growing recognition that the US is no longer the undisputed power it once was.

According to Debating American Primacy in the Middle East, what we are witnessing is not just another moment of crisis, but a turning point. The contradictions of US foreign policy, the fragility of its alliances, and the limits of its power have all been laid bare. The decline of American hegemony is not a future projection—it is unfolding now, in real time, across the Middle East and beyond. The only question that remains is whether Washington will acknowledge this reality and adapt, or whether it will continue clinging to a system of dominance that is already slipping away.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor or Informed Comment.

China-Africa Space Co-op Shows Tech’s Multipolarization, Democratization Trends

by Global Times / February 15th, 2025

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

In recent years, cooperation between China and Africa in the space field has deepened. However, some Western media outlets have tried to distort the nature of this cooperation. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that China is “building space alliances in Africa to enhance its global surveillance network and advance its bid to become the world’s dominant space power.” The article also cited remarks from the Pentagon, claiming that China’s space projects in Africa and other parts of the developing world are a “security risk.”

The real security risk is not cooperation or the sharing of technology, but the ideological prejudice of the West that clings to hegemony and obstructs progress. For a long time, space and other high-tech fields have been dominated by the US and its allies. Behind the smear campaigns of Western media lies the West’s fear of China-Africa cooperation.

The cooperation between China and Egypt in space technology, referred to by foreign media as “China’s secretive overseas space program,” has been open and transparent. Public records show that Egypt is the first country to carry out satellite cooperation with China under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. At the end of 2023, the jointly designed and developed satellite MISRSAT-2 was successfully send into orbit. An Egyptian Space Agency official said that the project has promoted the training of Egyptian space professionals, helping Egypt become a leader in the field of space satellites in Africa and the Middle East. This “teach a man to fish” approach is a key step for Africa to achieve autonomous industrialization and modernization.

Western media’s smear campaign against China-Africa space cooperation ignores the legitimate need for African countries to develop space technology. Space technology and monitoring systems can be used for weather monitoring, agricultural planning, environmental protection, and disaster management, helping Africa address climate change, improve agricultural productivity, optimize resource management, and enhance national emergency response capabilities.

More broadly, China-Africa space cooperation reflects the changing global technological cooperation landscape and the reshaping of development rights. In the past, developing countries often had to rely on Western countries for technological aid, which came with many restrictions. However, through the concept of South-South cooperation, China has provided a more equal and sustainable cooperation model, helping African countries achieve self-development in critical fields such as space technology. This not only enhances Africa’s position in the global technology system, encouraging developing countries to participate in global technology governance, but also contributes to advancing the global multipolarization process.

“Space is not a club for the rich,” said Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert. Through win-win cooperation with Africa, China is helping more developing countries to quickly enter the mainstream of global technological development, embodying the democratization and multipolarization trend of modern technology, he noted.

The focus of African and Global South countries is on more practical and sustainable development needs, rather than geopolitical games. The US and Western countries must choose the right path – abandoning the mind-set of technological hegemony, adopting a more open and inclusive approach, and actively participating in the global technological cooperation process.

From infrastructure construction to focusing on modernization and cutting-edge technology, the “sour grapes” narrative of foreign media cannot conceal the fruitful outcomes of China-Africa cooperation. While the West is busy weaving lies, China and Africa have already woven a network of development and illuminated an autonomous future with technology, writing a new chapter of unity and development for the Global South.

DeepSeek 

China’s AI “Embracing Open Source” Offers Insights to the World

by Global Times / February 14th, 2025

The breakthroughs in China’s artificial intelligence (AI) technology have sparked ongoing reverberations internationally. Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, publicly praised DeepSeek in recent days, saying it did some “nice work.” In a surprising 180-degree shift, he also expressed a desire to “work with China.” At the recently concluded Paris AI Action Summit, the French startup Mistral, also using an open-source model, was placed under high expectations. Moreover, when news broke of Apple collaborating with Alibaba to develop localized AI functions, both companies experienced a surge in their stock prices.

The fact is, China’s AI companies’ “embrace of open source” has not only paved new paths for their own growth but has also spurred demand for cross-border AI collaborations among enterprises. It is driving the global AI ecosystem to transform toward “open-source inclusivity.”

By offering some of its models for free, DeepSeek has ensured that the digital dividends of the AI era are shared equitably among all internet users. This decentralized, open-source strategy stands in stark contrast to the closed ecosystems, high resource barriers, and monopolization by a few players that have characterized AI technology in Western countries. It aligns with the global process of technological democratization. Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen wrote on social media platform X that as open-source, DeepSeek R1 is “a profound gift to the world.”

In recent years, China has been actively developing multiple national-level AI open innovation platforms, providing open access and shared computing resources. It can be said that the success of “open-source” large models is deeply rooted in the rich soil of “open source.” We observe that the development of AI technology follows a spiral progression of “open source-innovation-iteration,” a logic that also underpins global technological and economic development.

Today, from DeepSeek’s open-source ecosystem to Baidu’s Apollo autonomous driving open platform, from cost reduction and efficiency improvement in the pharmaceutical industry to collaborative innovation among multinational enterprises, these practices collectively illustrate a fundamental truth: The future of AI belongs to openness and sharing. Open source and inclusivity can certainly become a model for collaborative win-win scenarios in the global AI field, empowering and promoting sustainable development in the era of intelligence.

On February 12, The Conversation, a news website based in Australia, published an article stating that Chinese enterprises’ embrace of open-source AI “promises to reshape the AI landscape almost overnight.” The key drivers behind China’s rise in AI, in addition to being “fast” and “collaborative,” also include being “market-driven.” Thanks to China’s robust industrial supply chain, AI technology is being implemented at an astonishing pace. This is evident in the recent wave of adoption sparked by DeepSeek in China: Over a dozen local cloud-based AI chip manufacturers have announced compatibility or launched DeepSeek model services, several cloud computing giants have pledged support for DeepSeek, and industries such as telecommunications, automotive, brokerage, and education are rapidly integrating DeepSeek. This signifies that AI will play a leading role in driving the development of new quality productive forces, acting as a catalyst for broader innovation and overall economic quality improvement in China. It will also create new opportunities and possibilities for international cooperation.

At the recent Paris AI Action Summit, representatives from over 60 signatories, including China, jointly released a document titled “Statement on Inclusive and Sustainable Artificial Intelligence for People and the Planet.” Notably, only the representatives from the US and the UK did not sign. This indicates that the self-centered, exclusive and hegemonic logic of AI development has little market appeal internationally, while China’s advocated concept of open, inclusive, mutually beneficial and equal AI governance is recognized and accepted by the vast majority of global members.

Isolating oneself to pursue development without an environment for communication and competition risks being replaced by entirely new pathways, regardless of how high computational power is amassed. Only through open collaboration can we address global issues such as the distribution of computational power and the establishment of ethical standards. Attempting to maintain a competitive advantage in the AI era by digging “moats” is akin to dreaming, let alone opening the “interstellar gate.”

Moreover, closing the door on China means losing opportunities for exchanges involving advanced technologies. Some media outlets have pointed out that American companies’ further utilization of China’s open-source technology potential may be constrained by domestic political barriers.

Currently, the global development of AI is at a crossroads. Should we continue to rely on the hegemony of computing power to build technological barriers, or should we strive for common prosperity through inclusive cooperation? China’s answer is to promote innovation through open-source initiatives and seek development through inclusivity. As China integrates into the global technology network with a humble and open attitude, the world becomes more vibrant due to the convergence of diverse forces. The future of AI development may be defined by “symbiosis in competition.” The dawn of technological equality is beginning to emerge, and China looks forward to joining hands with the world to create a more inclusive era of intelligence.

Global Times, where this article was first published, takes great pains to present facts and views that could help the readers better understand China. Read other articles by Global Times, or visit Global Times's website.

Leaked Documents Expose US Interference Projects in Iran

Newly leaked documents expose Washington’s ongoing, covert push for regime change in Iran. With millions funneled into secretive initiatives, the US aims to infiltrate civil society, manipulate political participation, and engineer unrest, all while keeping its Iranian beneficiaries in the shadows.

By Kit Klarenberg

February 15, 2025

Source: The Cradle



A bombshell leak reviewed by The Cradle exposes the depths of Washington’s long-running campaign to destabilize the Islamic Republic.

For years, the US State Department’s Near East Regional Democracy fund (NERD) has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars into covert operations aimed at toppling Tehran’s government – without success. Details on where this money goes and who benefits are typically concealed. However, this leak provides a rare glimpse into NERD’s latest regime-change blueprint.

Covert funding for Iran’s opposition

The document in question is a classified US State Department invitation for bids from private contractors and intelligence-linked entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID.

Circulated discreetly in August 2023, it solicited proposals to “support Iranian civil society, civic advocates, and all Iranian people in exercising their civil and political rights during and beyond” the next year’s electoral period, “in order to increase viable avenues for democratic participation.”



NERD summoned applicants to “propose activities” that would “strengthen civil society’s efforts to organize around issues of importance to the Iranian people during the election period and hold elected and unelected leaders accountable to citizen demands.”

The State Department also wished to educate citizens on purported “flaws of Iranian electoral processes.” Submissions were to “pay special attention to developing strategies and activities that increase women’s participation in civil society, advocacy, rule of law, and good governance efforts.”

The document is filled with lofty, euphemistic language. NERD claims to champion “participatory governance, economic reform, and educational advancement,” aiming to cultivate “a more responsive and responsible Iranian government that is internally stable and externally a peaceful and productive member of the community of nations.” In other words, another compliant western client state that serves imperial interests in West Asia rather than challenging them.

NERD envisaged successful applicants coordinating with “governments, civil society organizations, community leaders, youth and women activists, and private sector groups” in these grand plans.

State Department financing would produce “increased diversity of uncensored media” in Iran, while expanding “access to digital media through the use of secure communications infrastructure, tools, and techniques.” This would, it was forecast, improve the “ability of civil society to organize and advocate for citizens’ interests.”

‘Human subjects’

NERD viewed Iran’s 2024 election cycle and the campaigning period as “opportunities” for civil society infiltration. The plan envisioned a network of “civic actors” engaged in electoral strategies ranging from “electoral participation” to “electoral non-participation” – in other words, either mobilizing voters or undermining turnout.

Meanwhile, “technical support and training” would be offered to aspiring female, youth, and ethnic minority leaders at all levels of governance – though no “currently serving” Iranian government official was eligible for assistance.

Once in place, this network of Iranian regime change operatives would, it was hoped, organize “mock national referendums” and other “unofficial” political action outside the Islamic Republic’s formal structures to highlight the alleged disparity between government action and public will.

Iranians would also be assisted in drafting “manifestos” on the local population’s “unmet needs and priorities.” Reference to how crippling US and EU-imposed sanctions contribute significantly to public discontent in Tehran was predictably absent. Instead, it stated:


“Activities should be nonpartisan and open to participation from a broad range of groups in order to encourage diverse actors to organize around common interests … All proposed activities must clearly demonstrate an impact upon citizens and civil society groups inside Iran. Support may be provided in-country, through third-country activities with Iranian participants, or virtually through online channels, but the applicant must demonstrate a direct link to civil society actors inside Iran and the ability to engage with these individuals safely and effectively.”

Curiously, certain expenditures were explicitly prohibited, including support for “individual political parties or attempts to advance a particular political agenda in Iran,” US-based activities, academic research, social welfare programs, commercial ventures, cultural festivals, and even “entertainment costs,” such as “receptions, social activities, ceremonies, alcoholic beverages [and] guided tours.”

Most strikingly, the embargo extended to “medical and psychological research or clinical studies using human subjects.” This raises unsettling questions about past NERD-funded projects: Have there been proposals involving human experimentation on Iranian or other foreign citizens? Were efforts to use alcohol as a destabilization tool previously entertained?

‘Rising protests’

It remains unknown which groups ultimately secured NERD funding for these regime-change efforts. The mainstream media maintains that such information is classified ostensibly due to “the risk activists face from Iran.” However, Washington’s secrecy may have less to do with security concerns and more with obscuring the questionable nature of these covert operations.

Tehran long ago wisely banned the meddlesome, subversive activities of US government agencies and intelligence fronts on its soil. However, Washington continued to support multiple western-based Iranian “exile” and diaspora groups, and associated NGOs, civil society groups, and propaganda platforms abroad.

While US officials have publicly acknowledged these efforts, the details – including the identities of sponsored groups and individuals – are systematically concealed.

For example, since-deleted public records show NED alone invested at least $4.6 million in 51 separate counter-revolutionary efforts in Iran between 2016 and 2021. This included financing labor unions, “strengthening independent journalism,” creating a legal publication to encourage “lawyers, law students, and clerics” to agitate for “democratic” reforms, and multiple initiatives concerned with “empowering Iranian women” in business, politics, and society.

The organization charged with delivering a specific initiative was named in just seven cases – that being the DC-based Abdorrahman Boroumand Center.

The identities of the remaining 44 recipients remain unknown. Another erased NED entry reveals that in the year leading up to the September 2022 protests in Iran, the agency spent nearly $1 million on undisclosed projects focused on “human rights” advocacy.

Not a single participating organization was named. For instance, tens of thousands of US dollars were pumped into an anonymous entity to “monitor, document, and report on human rights violations.” The organization would, moreover:


“Work closely with its network of human rights activists [in Iran] to build their capacity in reporting, advocacy, and digital security.”

Foreign influence and the hijacking of Iran’s protests

It’s unclear whether this windfall in any way influenced the September 2022 mass unrest in Iran, but NED was markedly keeping an extremely close eye on events locally from an early stage. One week after demonstrations commenced, the Endowment encouraged anyone interested in “coverage of the rising protests” to follow its aforementioned repeat grant recipient, the Abdorrahman Boroumand Center. While Iranian protests initially generated blanket western media coverage, they fizzled out as rapidly and abruptly as they began.

In a bitter irony, protesters’ energies were significantly dampened due to the brazen exploitation of the upheaval by western actors. Embittered activists openly complained their cause had been “hijacked” by foreign elements.

The most prominent of these US-based agitators is Masih Alinejad, an Iranian exile who has reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars from US government agencies for anti-Tehran propaganda operations. Falsely proclaiming herself to be “leading” the protest movement in the Islamic Republic was, it seems, sufficient to deter further action by locals on the ground.

This reveals the core reason why Washington conceals the recipients of its regime-change funding: Iran’s history of resisting western meddling makes its citizens deeply suspicious of foreign influence. Covert US backing erodes the legitimacy of opposition movements and fuels nationalist pushback.

Ironically, the Washington Post recently reported that many Iranians, across ideological lines, viewed US President Donald Trump’s administration’s freeze on regime-change funding as an opportunity for meaningful political evolution.

In former US president Joe Biden’s final year in office, the White House requested an additional $65 million for NERD’s operations, as outlined in the leaked tender. However, with this funding now in limbo, Iran’s western-backed opposition – largely dependent on foreign subsidies – finds itself in a state of paralysis.

As a result, a significant impediment to genuine diplomatic engagement between Washington and Tehran may have been removed. The coming months could reveal whether this shift opens new avenues for dialogue – or simply marks a temporary pause in America’s longstanding quest for regime change in Iran.

Kit Klarenberg
Investigative journalist.

Tom Paine and Presidents’ Day

TOM PAINE WAS AN INTERNATIONAL REVOLUTIOONARY

By Ted Glick

February 14, 2025

Source: Future Hope


Protesters at a rally against President Donald Trump at United Nations Plaza in San Francisco stand in the rain, holding a large banner reading "Whip Fascism - We Won't Go Backwards". A sign held up in the background reads "Our Liberation Must Be Intersectional As Fuck". (Photo: Pax Ahimsa Gethen)



The organizers of the pro-democracy actions last week on February 5, all around the country in all 50 states, have issued a call for actions this coming Monday, February 17, President’s Day. This day is mainly about remembering the USA’s first President, George Washington, as well as Abraham Lincoln. Washington was a slaveholder; Lincoln, of course, defeated, temporarily, the system of African enslavement in the South.

By coincidence this morning I was reminded about one of the original American revolutionaries who fought with Washington for independence from England, Tom Paine. It might be of value for those organizing the Monday actions to reference what he had to say in his book, Common Sense, about kings, or Presidents who act like kings:

“Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any.” p. 15, Dover Thrift Editions

Washington and Paine were both supporters of slavery. They also supported wars against Indigenous people to take their land for the benefit of European settlers. They personify this contradiction at the heart of the United States: a very imperfect union, at birth, but one which, over time, with Lincoln playing an important role, rejected much of that racist past and began the expansion of democratic rights and freedoms which have continued up until the 21st century.

Trump and MAGA want to role back as many of those rights as they can.

It is rare, from my experience, that the name Tom Paine is voiced among those in 21st century USA who see themselves as progressives or revolutionaries. I understand why this is the case, but I think there are very good reasons why we should be raising up his name as we continue to build our growing 21st century movement of movements for racial, gender, social and environmental justice, for a Green New Deal for low-income and working class people, for Medicare for All, for equity and equality for women, all people of color and lgbtq+ people, for “liberty and justice for all.”

“Citizen Tom Paine” is a book about Paine by Howard Fast published 70 years ago. It’s not a biography of Paine; it’s a work of historical fiction. But it presents much of the truth about the man, from his very real personal weaknesses and worts to his brilliance as a writer, speaker and organizer, his commitment to the cause of overthrowing British tyranny, “a way for children to smile, some freedom, some liberty, and hope for the future, men with rights, decent courts, decent laws, men not afraid of poverty and women not afraid of childbirth.” (p. 77)

Paine saw himself as a revolutionist. This was his life’s work. In a fictional exchange with fellow revolutionist and doctor Benjamin Rush, in a discussion about revolution, Rush articulates what was historically new about what was happening in the American colonies in the 1770’s: “The strength of many is revolution, but curiously enough mankind has gone through several thousand years of slavery without realizing that fact. But here we have a nation of armed men who know how to use their arms; we have a Protestant tradition of discussion as opposed to autocracy; we have some notion of the dignity of man [mainly white men]. . . but now we must learn technique, we must learn it well. . .Six months ago you were rolled in the dirt [assaulted] because people knew what you were writing; two weeks ago a man in New York was almost tarred and feathered because he planned to publish an answer to [Paine’s] Common Sense. That’s not morality; that’s strength, the same kind of strength the tyrants used, only a thousand times more powerful. Now we must learn how to use that strength, how to control it. We need leaders, a program, a purpose, but above all we need revolutionists.” (pps. 116-117)

Paine was a particular kind of writer, one who was immersed in the cause of independence, on the front lines of deadly battles, spending time in the bitter winter encampments of the nascent continental army, organizing, encouraging men to stick with it, inspiring them and pointing out how important what they were doing was. “This was all Paine had ever thought of or dreamed of, the common men of the world marching together, shoulder to shoulder, guns in their hands, love in their hearts.” (p. 124)

Fast paints a picture of Paine writing the first issue of The Crisis, a newspaper published by him during the war to present facts and strengthen morale: “The men gathered around him. They read as he wrote: ‘These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. . . If there be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace. . . Let it be told to the future world, that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive, that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet and repulse it.” (p. 145)

That’s a good last line, relevant for us right now 250 years later in the winter of 2025. Let the city and the country come forth to meet and repulse our common danger, this decade’s King George III and the reactionary MAGA movement under him. It’s just common sense.

Tom Paine

by Passos John Dos

The selected work of Tom Paine & Citizen Tom Paine

by Paine, Thomas, 17 37-1809; Fast, Howard, 1914-2003, ed

Tom Paine and Revolutionary America

by Foner, Eric

Amazon Stokes Racial Divides in Lead-Up to North Carolina Union Vote

By Natascha Elena Uhlmann
February 14, 2025
Source: Labor Notes
Facebook


Amazon workers and community supporters offered jail support after a former worker and two supporters were arrested while handing out food and collecting signed union cards on December 6.

 Photo: CAUSE

Four thousand workers at a North Carolina Amazon warehouse are voting February 10-15 on whether to unionize with Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity & Empowerment.

RDU1, in the town of Garner, outside Raleigh, would be the second unionized Amazon warehouse in the United States.

It’s an ambitious campaign. The workers are organizing across racial and ethnic divides, through constant turnover, in deeply hostile terrain. At 2.4 percent, North Carolina’s union density is the lowest in the country.

They’ll also need to overcome widespread fear of something Amazon is notorious for: retaliation. In January, Amazon abruptly outsourced its entire Quebec operation rather than be forced to accept a contract at one warehouse.

In North Carolina, it has fired several visible union supporters, including CAUSE President Rev. Ryan Brown.

An Anti-Union Army

On January 7, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that workers at RDU1 had signed enough union authorization cards to trigger an election.

“Three days later, Amazon mobilized an army,” said Marcela Duron, a stower. (Duron requested a pseudonym for fear of retaliation.) “Holding meetings, handing out pamphlets, all against CAUSE.”

Anti-union posters started showing up all over the building, even in the bathrooms. New faces appeared on the warehouse floor asking how workers felt about the union. Workers received a mailer at home linking to an anti-union website and urging them to vote no.

“If you’re on the floor talking to somebody, they will be there waiting like vultures to get to the person that you just talked to,” said Italo Medelius-Marsano, who has worked there since 2022. “They’ve already figured out who the union leaders are. They have very good intelligence. It’s almost like they’re union organizers, but on the other side.”

One night before the voting began, Garner police arrested an Amazon Labor Union leader who had come from New York to support the union campaign. In December, they arrested two community members and a fired Amazon worker who were flyering at the warehouse door.

“Under the National Labor Relations Act I should have been allowed to flyer on the premises,” said Orin Starn, who had worked at Amazon for six months. “But the police, who in the small town of Garner where Amazon is the biggest employer act as a kind of private security force, didn’t care and just took us off to jail.”

Scarce Local Jobs

The sprawling 2 million-square-foot warehouse is built on the site of a ConAgra Foods plant that was shut down after an explosion in 2009 killed four workers and injured dozens more. At the time, the plant was the largest employer in Garner—but rather than rebuild it, ConAgra opted to shift production to Ohio, putting 600 people out of work.

The space sat idle until Amazon opened this facility in 2020. It’s now one of the largest employers in the county—a fact that isn’t lost on workers.

“Some people in the building are afraid because they’re refugees, so they don’t want to draw attention,” said Duron. Others are afraid of losing hours, or their jobs altogether. Though the work is grueling, many feel it’s the best option available, “and Amazon has taken advantage of that.”

Workers feel that Amazon has seized on racial divisions in the workforce. “It’s mostly the Hispanic community that Amazon has been intimidating, that we could lose our benefits or possibly our jobs,” said Marcos Pedroza, who has worked at the warehouse for three years in a number of roles. (Pedroza, too, requested a pseudonym for fear of retaliation.)

“Many Hispanic workers say they’re against the union so they don’t get harassed, but they’ve told me they’re voting yes,” Pedroza said.

Divide and Conquer?

“Amazon’s strategy is very blatantly: get the Latino vote,” said Medelius-Marsano. “What we hear from people in all departments, in all shifts, is that Amazon is painting CAUSE as a Black union and saying, ‘All the Black folks are lazy and the Hispanics are the ones that work the hardest, and the union is only trying to protect lazy people.’” Amazon disputes the allegations.

A week before the union vote, an Amazon manager claimed the union had told workers they could be deported if they vote no—a claim Medelius-Marsano characterized as “absolutely disgusting” and “a complete falsity.”

“They’ve found fractures in this situation, and have capitalized on it well: on the prejudices of [some] Hispanic workers, differences between ethnic groups,” said Duron.

“I tell them, what are your roots?” says Pedroza. “Venezuela has African roots. Puerto Ricans are a mix of Africans, Spaniards, and Taínos. Why are you going to put something racial on a dark-skinned person when we have that in our blood, in our DNA?”

Organizing in Four Languages

Bosses have been exploiting racial divisions for as long as they’ve been beating back union campaigns. CAUSE can’t win without confronting the division head-on.

But the workplace divides have also helped make the case for the union. “We [functionally] don’t have an HR; there’s no one who consistently speaks Spanish,” Pedroza said. “At the Wellness Center, [too], no one [consistently] speaks Spanish.”

Training materials at the facility are often only available in English, a CAUSE newsletter asserted, “leading to misunderstandings and increased risk of accidents and injuries.” (Amazon says it has bilingual HR staff at the warehouse who help with translations.)

The union newsletters, now available in French, Spanish, and Arabic in addition to English, reflect efforts to build a coalition across language barriers.

The establishment of a Latino organizing committee was a turning point. “The organization boomed after that,” Medelius-Marsano said. “Within three to four months, we had at least 30 really strong Spanish-speaking leaders that were showing up weekly, and we were figuring out how we’re going to achieve full coverage of the warehouse.”

With time, the English-language organizing committee secured a Spanish-English interpreter, helping workers to connect and build relationships across language barriers.

‘Never Learned My Name’

When Amazon removed a statement “in solidarity” with Black employees from its website earlier this year, CAUSE was quick to respond in its newsletter: “Company policy can change at any time. Union contracts only change with our vote.”

One of the most common frustrations workers share is the perception that Amazon is not invested in them for the long haul. “You’re an old timer at RDU1 if you reach six months,” Medelius-Marsano said. “I was working in packing for over a year, and my manager never learned my name. I was just my username on our badge.”

“When you start here, everyone loses weight because of the sheer physical effort,” Duron said. “Amazon is one of the largest companies on the planet, and it has the resources to offer better working conditions.”

“People are going to the [anti-union] meetings just to get a break from work,” Pedroza said. “They can rest for an hour, so people keep going to the meetings. Then when they leave, they tell me, ‘I’m voting for the union.’”

Some quotes have been translated from Spanish to English.

AFL-CIO “Solidarity Center” Shut By Trump’s DOGE & Strange Silence By AFL-CIO Schuler & Labor Fed

By Kim Scipes, Frank Hammer

 February 15, 2025

Source: Labor Video

Trump and Musk’s DOGE has shut down the National Endowment for Democracy NED which is the largest funder of the AFL-CIO “Solidarity Center”. The Center is run by AFL-CIO president Liz Schuler and other leaders of the AFL-CIO who are on the board of trustees and it receives 96% of it’s income from USAID and the US State Department. It also operates in 62 countries around the world. The center last year had a budget of $73 million and over 400 workers some of whom are members in OPEIU Local 2 in Washington DC. The staff of this center is perhaps

even larger than that the of AFL-CIO itself. Despite this operation being a major part of the AFL-CIO, president Liz Schuler and the Executive Board of the AFL-CIO have been strangely silent about the closure of the center. They have refused to report to AFL-CIO affiliate unions as well as the rank and file about what they plan to do with their international operation now that they have been shut down and also what they are doing for the employees who worked at the Solidarity Center. For decades, trade unionists in the United States have demanded that the AFL-CIO open its books on their international operations including its role in working with the CIA to overthrow the Chilean Allende government which resulted in the death of over 10,000 workers. It has also been involved in supporting US coups in Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, El Salvador, Colombia and many countries around the world.

Professor Kim Scipes, professor Emeritus at Perdue University NW and a member of Labor Education Project on AFL-CIO Operations and Frank Hammer, retired president of the UAW Local 909 talk about the significance of this closure and what the labor movement must do to hold these officials accountable tor their international work which has been unreported to US unionists and workers

After Resounding ‘No’ Vote, Letter Carriers Should Go on Offense

By Rob Darakjian

February 14, 2025

Source: Labor Notes

Letter carriers in Branch 2902 in Newbury Park, California, were among many around the country who took a group photo to show their unity on voting no. Photo: Build a Fighting NALC

Members of the National Association of Letter Carriers have rejected a sellout tentative agreement by 71 percent, in a 63,680 to 26,304 vote.

That’s a turnout of 48.4 percent—and more “no” votes than the total turnout of 63,452 votes for the last contract. This result is a rejection of the current national leadership and its approach.

Hundreds of letter carriers joined the new network Build a Fighting NALC (BFN) in organizing the first real vote-no campaign in the NALC since 1978, working alongside the Concerned Letter Carriers and the Mike Caref for President campaign in a broad reform movement.

The issue of pay has been central. General inflation has increased more than 20 percent since 2020. Letter carriers were lauded for essential work through the Covid pandemic, and we received no hazard pay. But our national union leadership promised that this contract, at last, would include “record wage increases” and eliminate the tiers, moving to an all-career workforce.

Letter carriers had to wait for more than 500 days, since the contract expired in May 2023, to hear anything from our national leadership about the process of negotiations. While we were being left in the dark, we saw the Auto Workers wage their Stand-Up Strike, the Teamsters at UPS build a real contract campaign and prepare for a strike, and Boeing workers wage a 53-day strike—all winning record contracts with huge raises.

Yet when our tentative agreement was finally unveiled last October, it included an insulting 1.3 percent general wage increase per year, maintained all the existing wage tiers, and did nothing to address contract compliance. We decided not to just accept the crumbs we were offered.

A Brave Vote-No Campaign

BFN took the lead in organizing a national “vote no” campaign. Despite the widespread anger over the bad deal, we knew we had to bring letter carriers together to build their confidence to reject it.

Our national Zoom meeting launching the campaign drew more than 700 members. We provided materials and a strategy to get the wider membership involved. The main activities of the campaign were organizing parking lot meetings and rallies to discuss the offer, and “Vote NO” group photos in stations and parking lots.

Members also brought forward and passed “vote no” resolutions at general membership meetings in 55 branches including Branch 9 in Minneapolis, Branch 41 in Brooklyn-Staten Island, Branch 79 in Seattle, and Branch 34 in Boston.

Carriers organizing for a no vote met significant resistance within the union. Executive boards from the wing of leadership that backs President Brian Renfroe argued that a resolution encouraging a no vote would deprive members of the right to make up their own minds.

When the NALC endorsed Harris/Walz, no one was concerned it would be interpreted as a binding mandate on NALC members to vote for Harris. But when the issue was our own contract, BFN supporters were painted as interfering with democracy. We will have to keep fighting for the right to genuine discussion and debate inside our union.

Postal Service management also tried to intimidate members who participated in the vote no campaign. Many letter carriers passing out fliers on public sidewalks had supervisors come out and threaten them—and the carriers they were talking to—with discipline. In several instances, management even threatened to call police on them!

But despite these obstacles, hundreds of brave letter carriers took action to ensure their co-workers heard the vote-no arguments.

What Happens Now?

Now that the offer has been voted down, the union and management have until February 18 to negotiate further. If a new contract is not agreed upon, the process will most likely move to “binding interest arbitration,” where arbitrators decide the details of the contract without any input from members. We cannot simply wait while this process plays out.

We must also recognize the broader political context in which our contract struggle is playing out. President Trump and his new Department of Government Efficiency, directed by Elon Musk, have promised to cut trillions of dollars of federal spending. They have begun dismantling USAID, gained access to the Treasury Department’s financial information, and designated the Department of Education and Department of Labor as upcoming targets.

While the U.S. Postal Service is not funded directly by the government, we should expect Trump and DOGE to get involved in our contract struggle. They will raise a hue and cry about recent USPS deficits and do everything they can to deny us the wage and benefit increases we deserve. And if Trump and DOGE succeed in firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, it will encourage them to push for postal privatization.

Our national union leadership has called a “Fight Like Hell” kickoff event at its headquarters on Thursday, February 13, and President Renfroe has indicated over social media that several events around the country are in the works to put pressure on the Postal Service to come to an agreement. He recently spoke on the state of contract negotiations, claiming the union was negotiating to increase cost-of-living adjustments and to end the Table 2 and City Carrier Assistant wage tiers, which would raise starting pay to $30 an hour.

We should be under no illusions that Renfroe and his supporters have had a genuine change of heart. The bottom-up organizing and the resounding no vote are what pushed them to take up campaigning for aspects of BFN’s program. However, we should welcome this change in direction, support it, and try to expand it.

Drastic Times…

Branch 9 in Minneapolis and Branch 1100 in Los Angeles will be holding contract rallies during the 15-day window when NALC and USPS can renegotiate the contract. BFN calls on NALC’s national leadership to join with these branches and encourage national contract rallies to win the public to our side and show the arbitrator why we voted no. Our strength is our 290,000 members and the millions of ordinary Americans who support us, and we need to demonstrate that strength.

We should not wait for Trump and Musk to strike first. Our national union leadership should link our contract struggle to the struggle against DOGE’s reckless campaign to smash parts of the federal government that working people rely on. If they’re so concerned with the public debt, they can start by taxing the billionaires.

As a first step, the NALC should reach out to other federal employee unions to organize joint action. We have to stand together to confront this threat effectively.

Our union constitution provides that, if a new tentative agreement is voted down, our national leadership can call for an immediate work stoppage or a “designated job action,” rather than simply proceeding to binding arbitration. To defend against the threat posed by DOGE, the national leadership should instruct all NALC locals to prepare for job action, up to and including a strike.

As federal employees we are limited by law from striking. But Trump’s DOGE has not limited itself to the law, and we cannot afford to either.

Such a step cannot be taken lightly, and must be endorsed by the national leadership. Many letter carriers will feel justifiably concerned about the idea. But it is the rash and careless behavior of DOGE which brings us to discuss it. Any attempt to cut or privatize the post office must be met by collective action. Weakness invites aggression, and bullies respond only to strength.
Rank-and-File Caucus

Build a Fighting NALC is holding a public meeting on Sunday, February 16, to discuss organizing rallies as part of a national day of action in conjunction with the union leadership’s call. Union members can register for the meeting here.

It will take more than this contract to transform the NALC into the fighting union we need. It will take organizing to fight the daily fights in every station, which is why we have launched Build a Fighting NALC as a national rank-and-file reform caucus.

We’re now organizing BFN chapters across the country to build our power on the workroom floor. Join here.

Rob Darakjian  is a letter carrier in NALC Branch 2902 and a member of Build a Fighting NALC. Check out the group’s new website www.fightingnalc.com for more information and Vote No campaign materials. Email questions, photos, and reports to buildafightingnalc@gmail.com

Federal Workers Organize Against Billionaire Power Grab

By Joe DeManuelle-Hall

February 15, 2025

Source: Labor Notes

Federal workers and the public are confused and afraid about the chaotic volley of attacks, but also outraged at President Trump and his agent, Elon Musk, the world's richest man. Photo: AFL-CIO



The second Trump administration has the federal workforce in its crosshairs. Spearheading the effort is Elon Musk (the richest man in the world) and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (not actually a government department).

Trump and Musk have taken a shotgun-blast approach: instituting a hiring freeze, shutting down whole agencies, telling workers to stop coming in, offering buyouts to 2 million workers, ordering remote workers back to the office in violation of union contracts, and mass-firing workers still in their probationary periods.

In a flurry of executive orders his first day in office, Trump opened the door to moving federal workers out of positions protected by civil service rules and targeted remote work policies and diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.

The changes appear designed to create chaos among federal workers, their unions, and those who rely on federal programs. They have come fast and numerous, seemingly without regard to legality.

Many changes have been challenged legally, and some have already been stopped in the courts. But while only some will ultimately stick, there’s a lot of damage that will be hard to undo—and the chaos is meant to keep Trump’s opponents occupied, afraid, dispirited, and on the defensive.

Federal unions have begun to respond by filing lawsuits and holding rallies. And workers are organizing themselves to share information and begin to fight back. A rank-and-file group called the Federal Unionists Network is planning a nationwide “Save Our Services” day of action on February 19, targeting the dealerships of Musk’s car company Tesla—sign up here to participate locally.

“I’ve never seen a billionaire carry the mail,” said Mark Smith, a patient educator at the Veteran’s Administration in San Francisco and the president of National Federation of Federal Employee (NFFE) Local 1. “I’ve never seen a billionaire put out a forest fire. I’ve never seen a billionaire make sure people get their Social Security checks on time. I’ve never seen a billionaire answer a phone call from a suicidal veteran on a crisis line. So I don’t trust a billionaire to decide what happens to our public services—and that’s why we’re fighting to get this billionaire’s hands out of them.” (All the people quoted in this article spoke to Labor Notes in a personal capacity, not as representatives of their agencies or employers.)
HEAD-SPINNING PACE

The federal government is the largest employer in the U.S., with 2.4 million civilian workers (excluding the Postal Service). Attacking this workforce has become a central plank of Trump’s program.

In his first term, he claimed that the “deep state” and the “swamp,” meaning civil servants, were constantly undermining him through inaction or sabotage. This time, with increased vigor (and more planning), and aided by Musk and his acolytes, Trump has made a head-spinning number of moves to reshape and undermine federal agencies and the federal workforce.

Three months before the end of his first term, Trump signed an executive order creating a new class of at-will, political-appointee federal jobs into which his administration could move workers who were typically covered by civil service protections. These workers could now be fired much more easily.

Biden quickly undid this order, but when Trump returned, he immediately resurrected it. He has since made administrative moves to get ready to shift an unknown number of workers into these so-called “Policy/Career” positions (originally called “Schedule F”).

After announcing plans to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs, Musk and Trump sent out an email to 2 million federal workers offering them a chance to resign now and still get paid through September. The email mirrored one sent to Twitter employees after Musk took over the social media company, down to its “Fork in the Road” subject heading.

Among the workers who received the email were air traffic controllers. It appeared in their inboxes the day before a deadly crash in Washington, D.C.; the control tower was understaffed.

Musk, with Trump’s blessing, has targeted agencies one by one for scrutiny and partial—or full—shutdown. The U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides foreign aid, was unceremoniously shut down—7,000 workers were put on administrative leave or fired; even the agency’s nameplate was removed from the entrance to its headquarters.

Seventeen hundred workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to provide oversight of the financial services sector, were instructed not to show up to work and to stop many of their investigations. Days later, dozens of these workers who were still in their probationary periods—and thus, the government claims, not covered by union protections—were fired in an after-hours email.

Trump has since put 200,000 more workers in their probationary periods on the chopping block, and announced deep cuts to the IRS, the Energy Department, Housing and Urban Development, and the Forestry Service.
OUTRAGE AND RESISTANCE

Besides confusion and fear, these moves have provoked outrage in the federal workforce. In the week after the “Fork in the Road” email, hundreds of workers took to Reddit and other social media to denounce the offer as an unenforceable scam.

In another measure of resistance—or at least mistrust—workers have not flocked to take the resignation deal, despite the vague threat of future layoffs. Musk said he hoped five to 10 percent of eligible federal workers would take the deal; the government-reported number shows that 75,000, or around 3 percent, did. For comparison, around 150,000 federal workers retire or quit every year.

Less than 24 hours after receiving the emails that they had been fired, CFPB probationary workers organized pickets in New York City, Washington D.C., San Francisco, and Chicago.

“On Tuesday night, we each started getting these cryptic emails to our personal accounts,” said Chris Fasano, an attorney in the CFPB’s enforcement division and a member of National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 335. “We immediately got on a call with 60 or 70 of us. We talked about everything that was wrong, and how we had to notify the national [union] leadership and have a legal strategy—but that that wasn’t enough and that we wanted to take to the street.”

By 10 p.m., they had decided to hold an information picket at noon the next day. They scrambled to reach out to co-workers and allies, and to make signs and flyers. In New York City, “we were expecting maybe a dozen people,” Fasano said. “We had maybe 100 show up.” They included CFPB workers (fired and not), other NTEU members, and members of other unions and community groups.

Hai Binh Nguyen, an enforcement attorney at the CFPB, helped organize the San Francisco rally and reported a similar outpouring of support. “There’s a lot of support for the Bureau and our work,” Binh said. “It was amazing to have everyone see that we’re just the first domino to fall.”
MEMBERSHIP SURGES

Federal workers are spread across a handful of unions, the largest of which are the American Federation of Government Employees, representing 800,000 workers, and the NTEU, representing 150,000.

There’s also the NFFE, a Machinists affiliate; the Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), which represents 30,000 workers at agencies like NASA, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Tennessee Valley Authority; and National Nurses United, which represents 15,000 nurses at the Veterans Administration.

Federal worker unions are relatively limited in what they can bargain. Wages are off the table—those are set by Congress, and wage increases have to be passed as law. But they do negotiate over working conditions issues like discipline, scheduling, and remote work. (Postal workers are an exception; although they work for the federal government, they have collective bargaining rights and are covered by the National Labor Relations Act alongside private sector workers.)

The federal sector is “open shop”: workers represented by a union aren’t required to join it. So while AFGE represents 800,000 workers, it has 321,000 members. While NTEU represents 150,000, it has 87,000 members.

But AFGE and other federal unions have reported significant membership increases since the election and particularly after Trump’s inauguration. According to the Federal News Network, AFGE gained 8,000 members in January and 8,200 in the first 10 days of February. Compare that to the 7,400 members it gained in all of 2024, including newly organized workplaces.

“We’ve seen a massive increase in new membership,” said Lauren Lieb, a land law examiner at the Bureau of Land Management in New Mexico, and a chapter president and chief steward with NTEU Chapter 340, “including former holdouts who are finally coming on board and getting really engaged.” Lieb’s BLM group unionized relatively recently, in 2020, and they’ve been hearing from workers at other agencies asking how to do the same.

Smith at NFFE Local 1 reports a similar uptick. He and others have started holding weekly “Unions 101” sessions at the V.A. for federal workers; he says 170-180 people participate every week on their lunch breaks to learn about “unions—what they do, how they work, and updates about what’s going on.” Membership meetings are drawing the highest turnout ever in the local’s 25-year history.

AFGE and other groups of workers have held rallies in D.C. and around the country, denouncing the attacks. Unions and other organizations have also filed lawsuits over a number of Trump and Musk actions—including the email offering resignation, the attempt to move workers out of civil service categories, and Musk’s access to sensitive Treasury Department data.

Legal actions have succeeded in temporarily stalling some policy changes, but not yet overturned any. Lawsuits move slowly; they can’t match the frenzied pace at which Trump and Musk are operating.

A FORCE MULTIPLER

At the grassroots, activists are building connections across unions—sharing accurate information and strategies to fight back. One formation is the Federal Unionists Network (FUN), which has added thousands of federal workers to its rolls in an explosion of interest since the November election, through email lists, group chats, zoom calls, and in-person events and rallies.

FUN grew out of informal cross-union attempts to pressure Biden and the Democrats over changes to federal worker policies, as well as reform efforts inside particular federal unions. It held its first meeting at the 2024 Labor Notes Conference in Chicago. “That really catalyzed our efforts,” said Smith, who is active in the network.

After that, he said, “FUN was humming along, a little smaller, more informal, building more slowly, and then all of a sudden it was an emergency, and we started growing and expanding very quickly.”

FUN held a meetup in Washington, D.C., in the middle of AFGE and IFPTE’s legislative conferences, bringing together union leaders and activists from eight federal agencies to talk about what’s happening and how they’re taking on the challenge.

Union locals in the federal sector are extremely uneven. Some are essentially paper locals, with membership under 10 percent and little to no activity. So FUN has also been a place for workers to get accurate information about the administration’s attacks and learn how to get organized.

“We’ve been able to share resources like filing info requests, coordinating strategies together that we can execute independently within our own locals—it has been a really great and powerful tool to be able to stay in the fight,” said Lieb.

“Historically union locals in the federal sectors have been fragmented, isolated, and there haven’t been a ton of resources for support,” said Smith. “To be able to connect with hundreds of really engaged unionists all across the country has been such a force multiplier. People are developing as leaders, activists, at such a rapid pace because they’re able to get support and help.”

Trump’s Antic Disposition May Lead the Globe to Ruin

By Badri Raina

February 11, 2025

Source: The Wire


Image from Wikipedia

As the world hurtles each day faster and faster into the terminal womb of Chaos, the gods seem to have elected Donald Trump to be the enfant terrible whose narcissistic suave charm may see the project through.

Flush with victory and the conviction that his life surely was spared by an evangelical god for a great purpose, Trump’s charming ejaculations bearing upon what he means to do with the world may remind many of the so-instructive scene in Chaplin’s masterpiece, The Great Dictator, in which the dictator (read the Fuhrer) is shown alone with a huge plastic globe with nations etched on it, kicking, surmising, turning it over now this way, and now that, as a plaything which he means to make all his own.

Let us recall that during his first term as president, Trump openly regretted not having the same sort of loyalty from his military generals as Hitler had.

Thus, in no time after his reinstatement from convicted felon to American president, the world watches in awe as he spreads Gaza, Canada, Greenland, Panama on his plate of conquests-to-come, and China, Mexico, and what do you know, even the International Criminal Court to be set to rights without loss of time or money.

A world prostrate in jaw-dropping wonder, speculates: can this be true? Can he, will he do it? Will no one stand in his way?

And the speculation is not idle.

Look at what he has already achieved: he has placed the unelected, unaccountable, non-authorised-by-Congress, world’s richest man in an untouchable saddle of authority to finish off all and sundry in the institutions, in the bureaucracy, everywhere, wherever, who have been accustomed to follow the constitution and the rule of law rather than the principle of loyalty to the dictator.

News channels like NBC, CNN, still speaking their piece – (ah that yet-unconquered First Amendment – for how much longer no one living, however lawfully in America, may now truly know) – reference some brave-hearts in the justice system who have made bold to say “hold”; but does not Trump know he has his men in the supremest of courts when and if such matters go there?

Killed with kindness

As to the world still beyond American borders, the tariffs, the sanctions, the threats to take-back etc., are only the least part of the playful dictator’s brazen armoury.

Overtaken by a grand fancy laced with a Damien smile (not even those whose commitment to a rule-based international order remains an article of faith are able to say with any conviction that his purpose is a delusion merely), this Fuhrer of our day with the corresponding Duce from Tel Aviv by his side, has the innocent gall to tell the Palestinians in Gaza how they may, after all, have been killed with kindness, so that the land now a rubble sanctified by human remains, can be tastefully rebuilt as a Mediterranean riviera while their survivors are nicely shunted off to ensure the real-estate is available for new, delectable development which the conquerors may duly grace and settle in.

How instructive the cool method in this Nazi madness: lebensraum, lebensraum, vacate the land, clear a path, o ye wretched and sinful Amalek of the day, so that god’s chosen may find the full spread they were promised four thousand years ago.

Such is the reality of this daring that many are reminded of the appeasement that ensured Hitler’s entry into Czechoslovakia. Only when he went into Poland did hackles rise as the British declared war.

Ah, that same Britain should today be so on the side of the marauders.

The point is this: is there anyone in this day and age who might truly declare war, more than making disagreeable statements for the record?

For example, will the destiny of the Palestinians weigh more with the canny prince of Saudi Arabia than tariffs and sanctions? Not to speak of others whose hearts bleed in native Arabic for fellow Palestinians.

And are there nations whose mouth’s may be watering to install their own Musk’s in such high places, so they may openly shoulder to shoulder, destroy the clout of constitutional systems and laws thereof and give royalty to those installed but not quite crowned yet?

How may poor Adani be ruing the alleged deeds he has been caught in; had he not been so caught, might not Trump and the American example have opened a similar path for him in open daylight?

Will China and Russia look on while the Palestinians are cleansed out of Gaza and the West Bank?

Will Europe, challenged by her own right-wing effulgence, make political averments but privately applaud the deed in Palestine, should it transpire?

Will India hope something similar may be attempted in our backyards?

Do not think this is idle chatter: the Second Coming may be here, not of the Saviour but of the antichrist.

Badri Raina is a well-known commentator on politics, culture and society. His columns on the Znet have a global following. Raina taught English literature at the University of Delhi for over four decades and is the author of the much acclaimed Dickens and the Dialectic of Growth. He has several collections of poems and translations. His writings have appeared in nearly all major English dailies and journals in India.