Canada, Mexico leaders meet amid US tariff war


By AFP
September 18, 2025


Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney (L) and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum at a Group of Seven (G7) summit in June - Copyright AFP ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS
Jean ARCE

Mexico’s president will host the leader of Canada for trade talks Thursday as they seek to navigate the tariff war launched by Donald Trump despite the existence of a three-way free-trade agreement.

Claudia Sheinbaum and Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada are to meet in Mexico City as Trump pushes to renegotiate the USMCA North American trade pact in place since 2020. It replaced the NAFTA accord signed in the 1990s.

The US president considers the new three- way deal unfavorable to his country, and has lashed out at his neighbors to the north and south over illegal migration and drug trafficking.

Trump has so far spared Mexico much of the threatened punishment, but hit some Canadian goods with 35-percent duties.

Sheinbaum told reporters Thursday that Carney’s visit would seek to “strengthen the Mexico-Canada relationship which, in addition to the treaty we already have, is to strengthen trade and economic investments in certain sectors.”

The pair will discuss boosting trade via Canadian and Mexican ports instead of roads or trains crossing through the United States.

The leaders will also consider a program of special visas for Mexican workers, as well as cooperation in education, renewable energy, and innovation, Sheinbaum said.

Before the trip, Carney said the two countries maintain “a strong relationship, built on more than three decades of free trade.”

He added that “in the face of a shifting global landscape, we are focused on elevating our partnerships in trade, commerce, security, and energy.

“Together, we will build stronger supply chains, create new opportunities for workers, and deliver greater prosperity and certainty for both Canadians and Mexicans.”

A review of the USMCA is scheduled for next year.

US tariffs are badly hurting Canada’s crucial auto, steel and aluminum sectors, leading to job losses.

Canada retaliated with tariffs on billions of dollars of US imports but, in a gesture aimed at facilitating a deal, Carney has since exempted US goods that fall under USMCA.

Sheinbaum has so far managed to stave off a blanket 30-percent US import tariff, although Mexico’s automotive, steel and aluminum sectors — like those of other countries — have been hit with higher levies.

The United States has long been the main destination for exports from both Mexico and Canada.

Bilateral trade between Mexico and Canada last year totaled under $32 billion — more than 20 times less than the trade each has with the United States.

Canada central bank cuts key lending rate citing Trump tariffs


ByAFP
September 17, 2025
Ben Simon

Canada’s central bank cut its key lending rate on Wednesday, offering a boost to borrowers in an economy squeezed by US President Donald Trump’s trade war.

The Bank of Canada reduced the rate to 2.5 percent, after holding it at 2.75 percent since March as it weighed the impact of Trump’s fluctuating tariffs on Canadian businesses heavily dependent on exports to the United States.

But the bank said there was now clear evidence Trump’s protectionism was inflicting damage on key, targeted sectors — notably autos, steel and aluminum, which have all suffered job losses.

“Tariffs are weakening the Canadian economy. You can see that very clearly in the directly affected sectors,” central bank Governor Tiff Macklem told reporters after the announcement.

The bank noted Canada’s GDP declined roughly 1.5 percent in the second quarter of 2025.

In the first quarter, exporters benefitted from a rush of orders from the United States as businesses tried to stock up before Trump’s tariffs fully took hold, the bank said.

But Canadian exports fell by 27 percent in the second quarter as rush orders eased.

There “is less US demand for our exports because there’s tariffs,” Macklem said.



– New trade deal? –



Trump has so far maintained tariff exemptions on goods compliant with an existing North American free trade agreement, partly muting the damage to Canada’s economy.

Macklem stressed the tariff rate for most Canadian exports to the United States remains low, as the vast majority of products fall under the trade pact, known as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).

But that deal, agreed during Trump’s first term, is up for review in 2026.

The prospect that Trump may seek major revisions has created further risk for Canada.

“With some stability in US tariffs in recent weeks, near-term uncertainty may have come down a little, but the focus is shifting to the upcoming (USMCA) review,” Macklem said.

Canada was the first G7 country to begin cutting rates last year, following several hikes to tame pandemic-fueled inflation.

While Wednesday’s cut was largely expected by analysts, the bank warned it would proceed cautiously, given the risk that US protectionism could drive up inflation.

Macklem told reporters that businesses are facing new costs as they try to adjust “to a different relationship with (Canada’s) biggest trading partner.”

People are looking for new suppliers and new customers, he said, adding that the eventual consequences of those shifts remain uncertain, including on inflation.

Given the broad uncertainty about the path ahead, Macklem said the central bank would be more cautious than normal about issuing any future guidance, as it closely watches export figures over the coming weeks.

Desjardins economist Royce Mendes predicted an additional cut at the bank’s next meeting in October, but said it was clear the bank was worried about further tariff damage.

“The Bank of Canada still seems wary of assuming that all of the impacts of US trade policy are in the rearview mirror,” he said.

With eye on US threat, Venezuela holds Caribbean military exercises


By AFP
September 17, 2025


This screen grab from a video posted by US President Donald Trump shows what he said was a US military strike on drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea - Copyright US President Donald Trump's TRUTH Social account/AFP HANDOUT

Venezuela said Wednesday it had begun three days of military exercises on its Caribbean island of La Orchila as tensions soar amid US military activity in the region.

Forces deployed for what Washington called an anti-drug operation have blown up at least two Venezuelan boats and a combined 14 people allegedly transporting drugs across the Caribbean this month — a move slammed as “extrajudicial execution” by UN experts.

The strikes and a deployment of US warships in the region have raised fears of an invasion in Venezuela, whose President Nicolas Maduro Washington accuses of being a cartel leader. The exercise ordered by Maduro as commander-in-chief was baptized “Sovereign Caribbean,” Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said Wednesday.

“There will be air defense deployments with armed drones, surveillance drones, submarine drones… We are going to implement electronic warfare actions,” he added, citing the “threatening, vulgar voice” of the United States.

Public television showed images of amphibious vessels and warships deployed off La Orchila, where Venezuela has a military base.

The armed forces said the exercises will involve 12 ships, 22 aircraft and 20 small boats from the “Special Naval Militia.”

La Orchila island is close to the area where the United States intercepted and held a Venezuelan fishing vessel for eight hours over the weekend.

Maduro, whose last two elections the US and many other countries did not recognize, has vowed Caracas would defend itself against what he labeled US “aggression” against his country.

Washington is offering a $50 million bounty for the arrest of Maduro, who faces drug trafficking charges.



– ‘Who saw the drugs?’ –



Venezuela has urged an investigation of a US strike on an alleged drug boat early this month that killed 11 people.

It was one of three Venezuelan vessels US President Donald Trump said his country had “knocked off” without providing details.

“One doesn’t know, because they say it carried drugs, but who saw the drugs?” Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said earlier Wednesday as he claimed Venezuela is cracking down on narcotics.

Cabello told reporters that officials have seized over 60 tonnes (about 66 US tons) of drugs so far this year.

“It is the largest amount that has been seized since 2010,” said Cabello, who like Maduro and other senior officials is under US sanctions.

Trump has justified taking military action by saying “violent drug trafficking cartels POSE A THREAT to US National Security, Foreign Policy, and vital US Interests.”

The US government has released videos of two of the boat strikes and claims it has irrefutable evidence the people killed were US-bound traffickers.

It has not provided details to back up those claims. Drug trafficking is not a capital offense under US law.

Caracas has consistently denied being a trafficking hub.

JD Vance Jokes About US Vessel Strikes: “I Wouldn’t Go Fishing Right Now”


Critics noted his remark seems to further the notion that the US is targeting civilians.

By Sharon Zhang ,

Truthout

September 18, 2025

Vice President JD Vance salutes as he steps off Air Force Two at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland upon his return from Howell, Michigan, on September 17, 2025.JESSICA KOSCIELNIAK / POOL / AFP via Getty Images

Vice President JD Vance is being criticized for making light of the U.S. strikes that killed at least 14 people on boats in the Caribbean as backlash grows over the bombings, which experts said targeted civilians.

At a rally on Wednesday, Vance bragged about the supposed success of the strikes, which Venezuelan officials have said are designed to stoke war with the country.

“I was talking to Secretary [of Defense Pete] Hegseth, and you know what he said? ‘You know what Mr. Vice President, we don’t see any of these drug boats coming into our country, they’ve completely stopped,’” Vance said.

“And I said, ‘I know why. I would stop too — hell, I wouldn’t go fishing right now in that area of the world,’” he went on, laughing.

Vance’s joke was criticized for its callous nature, with critics saying that the joke appears to admit that the U.S. would target civilians.

“Get it? The joke is that we might kill some totally innocent people! Haha that’s funny, right?” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow for the American Immigration Council.

A group of UN experts condemned the strikes as “extrajudicial execution” in a statement on Tuesday, saying that the military action “violates the right to life.”

“International law does not allow governments to simply murder alleged drug traffickers,” the group said. “Under international law, all countries must respect the right to life, including when acting on the high seas or in foreign territory. The use of potentially lethal force is only permitted in personal self-defence or defence of others against an imminent threat to life.”

Vance has said he is totally uninterested in following international law when conducting such bombings. Last week, in response to criticism that the U.S.’s initial strike on a vessel in the Caribbean was a war crime, the vice president said: “I don’t give a shit what you call it.”

President Donald Trump said on Monday that the military killed three people in a strike on another boat that he claimed to be from Venezuela. This follows another strike on a boat in the Caribbean that killed 11 earlier this month, which has already been widely condemned as a war crime. Venezuela said that the U.S. also seized and detained a fishing boat in Venezuelan waters on Friday.

Trump has claimed that both strikes were carried out in self-defense, claiming that he is protecting Americans from the drug trade — a novel legal argument from his administration that experts say has no precedent or legal backing.

Rather, senators have said that the Pentagon has zero evidence backing the idea that the strikes are done in self-defense, and has not provided any even when pressed by Congress. In a letter last week, 20 Democrats sent a letter noting that the administration has not offered “any legitimate legal justification for the strike, or any evidence to support its claims regarding the basis for this strike or the future strikes it has openly threatened to launch.”

Meanwhile, The Intercept’s Nick Turse has reported that lawmakers, experts, and even a Pentagon official have said that the initial strike was carried out in violation of international law. Further, The Intercept reported that the administration is “thwarting congressional oversight” of the military actions and last week barred senior House leadership staffers from attending a briefing on the attack.

We Can’t Let White Nationalism Dictate What Is Taught and Learned in Classrooms


Curricula that challenge oppression are being shut down. How do we resist?

By George Yancy 

Truthout

September 18, 2025

First graders color a worksheet on the first day of school at Conroe ISD's Eissler Elementary School in Conroe, Texas, on Wednesday, August 13, 2025.Brett Coomer / Houston Chronicle via Getty Images.

Education in the U.S. is in danger of becoming a site where white nationalism exclusively dictates what is taught and learned.

In the past, Donald Trump has decried discussions in U.S. schools about systemic racism as a “twisted web of lies” and even “a form of child abuse.” Now, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the far right is weaponizing the killing to push for alarming new infringements on free speech — including against professors and K-12 teachers.

The white ideological form of indoctrination promoted by Trump and the far right reinforces the lie that the U.S. is a country of “racial innocence.” In a 2024 interview with Truthout, Cornel West argued that “what distinguishes the American empire is its obsession with innocence, and its obsession with dreams. The innocence hides the violence, and the dreams generate the sentimentalism.”

Education that is obsessed with “innocence” denies reality. To deny reality is, in this case, to have one’s judgment clouded by sentimentalism that is tied to American nostalgia, which is indicative of the MAGA ethos. It is important, therefore, that the lie of white innocence be laid bare through a daring form of critical education that reveals how white complicity functions to conceal itself. If critical thought is necessary for a democracy and vital for challenging MAGA’s book banning, anti-BIPOC and anti-LGBTQIA ideology, along with its epistemic violence, it is necessary to unveil the threats to education in this contemporary moment.

In this exclusive interview, Barbara Applebaum provides deep insights into the far right’s current odious distortion of U.S. education and suggests critical ways of articulating and demonstrating opposition. Applebaum is professor in Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University. Her training is in philosophy of education, but her work and teaching are interdisciplinary in nature. She is the author of Being White/Being Good: White Complicity, Responsibility and Social Justice Education and, more recently, White Educators Negotiating Complicity: Roadblocks Paved with Good Intentions. The interview that follows has been lightly edited for clarity and length.



George Yancy: Speak to the importance of the critical in critical education at this moment. And how do we encourage criticality among educators given the political stakes?

Barbara Applebaum: As I am reflecting on your profoundly relevant questions, I am simultaneously preparing my fall courses and trying to negotiate the challenges of teaching with commitments to social justice at a political juncture where, on the one hand, such commitments are accused of being “divisive” and “harmful to students” and, on the other hand, anti-BIPOC and anti-LGBTQIA rhetoric is gaining confidence. Educators who encourage students to question hierarchies of hegemonic power and teach about the effects of the norms of whiteness on all students and on our society are charged not only with “indoctrinating an ideology of wokeness” but also with promoting hate toward white people. Ominously, book bans, anti-“critical race theory” (CRT) laws, and “Don’t Say Gay” laws are being justified by professed “good intentions” that are selectively concerned with students in ways that the difference between forms of genuine harm and the discomfort often necessary for learning become indistinguishable.

Education as the battleground for cultural wars is hardly new. James Baldwin reminds teachers who want to teach with commitments to social justice that “you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resistance.” Yet there seems to be something unprecedented in the way education today is under attack. Book bans, as well as anti-CRT and “Don’t Say Gay” laws, work against empowering students with the critical tools required to recognize and challenge power structures that affect their lives and the lives of those around them. These laws not only attempt to silence marginalized perspectives and concerns but also obstruct the ability to communicate and have rich dialogue in the classroom. Education that does not encourage an openness to perspectives that are silenced by systemically dominant narratives is not politically neutral. And now the criticality required to understand this is being muzzled through fears of severe penalties, threats of loss of employment, and other forms of harsh punishment, as you have yourself experienced in the past. Yet opposition to the type of criticality that critical education encourages is harmful to all students because if one refuses to name something, one does not have to do anything about it since it becomes easy to pretend the unnamed reality does not exist.


Critical education is a remedy for the type of divisiveness that harms, not its cause.

Criticality is vital for democracy. Critical education is a remedy for the type of divisiveness that harms, not its cause. But it is important to underscore what I mean by criticality because the concept of “critical” can be co-opted, as when some students declare they are being “critical” of critical education. The language of criticality can serve to support the very techniques of governance that critical education attempts to bring out for analysis.

What makes today’s attack on critical education so unprecedented and challenging is that on the one hand, hermeneutical resources necessary to explain and communicate marginalized experience are being censored. On the other hand, those very same hermeneutical resources are being misused, distorted, and detached from their original meaning to re-veil exactly what those resources aim to unveil. This is why the recent scholarship around epistemic injustice by José Medina, Kristie Dotson, and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr., among others, is so vital for the criticality we need to encourage in our students. Those who have been pushed to the margins of social reality develop hermeneutical resources to understand their experiences and to engage others in conversations about their experiences. What we are experiencing today is that those in power censor progressive ideas but then deploy these concepts in misappropriated ways to shield dominant group “innocence” from challenge. Such defensiveness makes constructive communication across different positionalities impossible in the classroom. And this entire process masquerades under the label of being “critical” of critical theory. Ironically, students can only recognize this, even consider this, and dialogue about this if they have the critical tools that critical education fosters.

Critical whiteness studies, a field of critical education that I teach, offers students the tools to make visible the hegemonic normativity of whiteness that operates both through individuals and institutions without question but also aims to contest the discursive and rhetorical ways systems of hegemony are maintained. When white students protect their sense of innocence by resisting the discomfort that results from questioning white-centered reality that they are comfortable with, whiteness is re-centered, fortified, and upheld; anti-BIPOC [sentiment] along with other forms of social injustice are emboldened. Nothing in what I teach tells students to hate white people. I offer them critical tools that can encourage them to consider: What don’t we know? What don’t we want to know? What do we need not to know? At the end of the course, I will ask my students to be their own judge whether I have indoctrinated them to hate white people, or whether I have instead provided them with some of the necessary concepts that facilitate constructive conversations across different positionalities.

I teach undergraduate and graduate philosophy courses on whiteness. Part of the problem is that many of my white students come to class unaware of how their whiteness is complicit with systemic racism. In your book, Being White, Being Good, you argue, “White complicity pedagogy encourages white students to learn to be constantly vigilant as there is no innocence to hide behind.” Given the attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), explain how educators, through the lens of white complicity pedagogy, can effectively circumvent the lie of white innocence. As you know, DEI has been important in terms of refusing to lie about the reality of anti-BIPOC racism.

White innocence, in particular, and dominant group innocence, in general, is one of the most tenacious obstacles that gets in the way of critical reflection on whiteness or other forms of dominant norms, not to mention that it impedes cross-racial dialogue. Even the most ardently self-proclaimed white paragons of white anti-racism must be vigilant about the ways white innocence can become a smoke screen that chokes off deeply critical self-reflection about how one is complicit in the perpetuation of unjust systems of racism. White confessions of complicity in public self-disclosures can indeed function as a relief from the discomfort of learning about one’s complicity. Even when whiteness is disavowed, one must be vigilant that whiteness is not reiterated. That is why white complicity pedagogy begins with helping white students recognize the ways they are complicit and challenges white innocence.


Those in power censor progressive ideas but then deploy these concepts in misappropriated ways to shield dominant group “innocence” from challenge.

For some people, these are very provocative claims. Yet the astonishment of this provocation itself belies presumptions of innocence. When I present a paper demonstrating how white innocence inhibits the ability to consider one’s complicity, I am often sharply accused of discounting any view expressed that goes counter to that claim. The ostensible advocacy for “viewpoint diversity” seems disingenuous at a time when diversity, equity, and inclusion programs across the nation are being shut down and teaching about race and gender are severely restricted.

I find your writings on white innocence as a form of suture helpful to my students’ understanding of the harms of white innocence. Being sutured by presumptions of innocence protects invulnerability and closes one off from alterity. You call for white people to un-suture so we/they can be open and not afraid to be vulnerably moved by BIPOC epistemologies and to encourage white people to tarry with critiques of whiteness instead of running away from them.

White complicity pedagogy aims to help white students towards un-suturing by demonstrating to students how presumptions of white innocence influence the ways white people understand whether systemic racial injustice exists, who is harmed and victimized by it, and what we can do about it. Complicity is the starting point (although not sufficient) for racial ethics.

In the classroom, I have observed the subtle and not so subtle attempts to defend white innocence impeding the ability of white students to engage with what BIPOC students are saying and it contributes to the racial battle fatigue that BIPOC students so often experience in higher education. Working with white students to critically examine when their good intentions and their benevolence harm others using videos, stories, research and, most significantly, reading about the consequences of whiteness on BIPOC students is a challenge. It is not that white students should not have good intentions but rather that good intentions are not enough and that there is a need to develop a critical vigilance for when good intentions are harmful to others. I specifically make my own whiteness vulnerable and reference examples from my own teaching practice. I mention a story about two white nurses in my course who constantly pronounced their benevolence. They took this course to learn about their “diverse” clients to help them better, they insisted, not to learn about their whiteness. To which one of my BIPOC students replied, “Who wants your help? BIPOC people are looking for justice. Help is not the same thing as justice.” The nurses’ beliefs in their good intentions blocked their ability to consider that white generosity often comes not only with mistaken understandings but also with expectations of gratitude. I may not have broken through the nurses’ white innocence, but I observed that this story has had an effect on other white students when I recount it.

I find it helpful to complement readings in critical whiteness studies with readings that discuss the connection between discourse and truth. In addition, as already mentioned, there is so much to learn from delving into the scholarship and research on epistemic injustice.

Put briefly, I name the many ways that innocence is bolstered by white denials (in other words, revealing how complicity works in quotidian moments) such as claims of ignoring race, white silence and other white distancing strategies, blaming the victim and ignoring historical and institutional contexts, and more. I emphasize that these are patterns of practices that are reiterated and, consequently, harm BIPOC students through accumulation. (Your analysis of the elevator effect is so immensely helpful in demonstrating this.) Finally, I emphasize that being complicit does not do away with activism but rather makes us accountable to work together with others through a vision of responsibility that is vulnerable, exhibits a willingness to accept uncertainty that emerges from humility, and to not be afraid of vigilant critique.

Henry A. Giroux links the global spread of fascism with the fact that civic culture is crumbling under “the weight of manufactured ignorance.” You’ve written a great deal about ignorance, especially the concept of willful ignorance. This concept is not just a complex epistemological one but involves a process that could entail all sorts of profound dangers. I’m thinking here, for example, of those who are willfully ignoring the environment, health care, toxic xenophobia, the rise of fascism. Talk about the pervasiveness of the logics of willful ignorance in the U.S. and how this country is crumbling partly because of it — specifically at this moment.

Manufactured ignorance reminds me of Zeus Leonardo’s argument that white people know about the daily and structural features of systemic racism but have willfully distorted interpretations of such features that are taken for truth. Moreover, manufactured ignorance is systemic and intentional in the sense that it is an ignorance born not only from not knowing but also not wanting to know, not needing to know, and needing not to know. The erudite philosopher Charles Mills famously describes white ignorance as an agreement to misinterpret the social world that is relentlessly cultivated by norms, habits, discourse, social imaginaries, and institutions that perpetuate systems of oppression and privilege. Such ignorance is not just a lack of knowledge but supported by dominant systems, and it is active because it allows dominant ideas to be projected onto marginalized experience in ways that distort, erase, and silence the meaning of such experiences. It is not just being unaware but actively choosing not to know. This is especially prevalent in the direction our society is going today.

Willful, active ignorance is the glue that holds presumptions of innocence and denials of complicity together because ignorance serves to protect white people’s self-image as “good” and to ignore uncomfortable truths about ourselves/themselves that would challenge that self-image. Two outstanding scholars helped me to more clearly articulate the “willful” in this type of ignorance and thus its harms and responsibilities.

Gaile Pohlhaus Jr. charts out relationship between situatedness and interdependence as two factors in the creation and dissemination of knowledge in society. I won’t detail that here. But a helpful concept emerges from this analysis. Willful hermeneutical ignorance points to the ways in which communities of marginally situated knowers develop conceptual resources to explain their experiences. However, dominantly situated knowers not only actively refuse to acknowledge and use these resources but also often impose dominant conceptual resources to explain the experiences that marginalized knowers express. This constrains what dominantly situated knowers are likely to know and what dominantly situated knowers are willing to know. Willful hermeneutical ignorance makes forming cooperative interdependent relationships with differently situated knowers difficult. Using inapt concepts to interpret experience and refusing to recognize its faultiness impairs communication across positionalities.


Willful ignorance is not new, but it is especially dangerous today given who has the power to censor how people can speak up against social injustice.

Motivated ignorance is the term Karyn Freedman uses to describe the kind of incentivized ignorance that arises in circumstances of unequal power relations and that protects individuals from reflecting on the benefits they accrue in virtue of being a member of a dominant social group at the expense of harms to others.

Willful ignorance is not new, but it is especially dangerous today given who has the power to censor how people can speak up against social injustice. Facts and truths can be willfully ignored and there is a political effort that makes such ignore-ance harder and harder to discredit. But the consequences are far-reaching and dire. Not only does willful ignorance deteriorate the ability to recognize and name injustice (which impedes efforts to address and change injustice through collective action), but also moral character is eroded in ways that risk leaving us with the corpse of democracy.

This brings us back to the importance of the critical in critical pedagogy. To resist and fight against ignorance as such is one thing, but willful ignorance fights back against knowledge. In short, MAGA as a movement embodies a site of willful ignorance, where Trumpian true believers subsume their freedom under a banner of white “purity.” How do we fight against willful ignorance, which empowers Trump?

I am struggling with that question today; many of us are. In order to keep this short, I will mention these four points that seem important to me. First, be willing to address how whiteness infects intersectionality. Specifically, I am trying to apply the ideas I mentioned above to help my white Jewish students understand how to be genuinely engaged and not defensive when we have discussions about Palestine. Second, white complicity pedagogy can recenter whiteness and be complicit when educators decenter the needs and interests of BIPOC students as they are dealing with whiteness. Be vigilant about the risks of recentering whiteness even when we have good intentions. Third, find spaces where you are critically challenged, echoed, and supported. Read Truthout. I found chapters 4 and 5 of Jesse Hagopian’s Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education inspiring. Finally, don’t give up. You are not alone; there is an emotionally healing and powerful resistance alive and well. Curricula whose primary objective is to teach the critical skills necessary to understand, analyze, and challenge oppressive systems are being shut down through fear. Collectively, we need to break through the wall of fear gripping education and that is shaping what kind of country this is going to be. Keep fighting.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

George Yancy is the Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of philosophy at Emory University and a Montgomery fellow at Dartmouth College. He is also the University of Pennsylvania’s inaugural fellow in the Provost’s Distinguished Faculty Fellowship Program (2019-2020 academic year). He is the author, editor and co-editor of over 25 books, including Black Bodies, White Gazes; Look, A White; Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America; and Across Black Spaces: Essays and Interviews from an American Philosopher published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2020. His most recent books include a collection of critical interviews entitled, Until Our Lungs Give Out: Conversations on Race, Justice, and the Future (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023), and a coedited book (with philosopher Bill Bywater) entitled, In Sheep’s Clothing: The Idolatry of White Christian Nationalism (Roman & Littlefield, 2024).

Tennessee Republican muses about underwater 'entities' that came to Earth a millennium ago

HE READ THE LOVECRAFT MEMO

Sarah K. BurrisMatt Laslo
September 18, 2025 

RAW STORY

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) on UAPs (Photos: Screen captures)

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) told Raw Story that aliens may have come to the Earth 1,000 years ago or more and could have been living in the deep ocean.

Walking on Capitol Hill Wednesday night, Burchett mused, "What if these are entities that are on this Earth that have been on this Earth — who knows how long, and that we, we, think that they're coming in from way out. Maybe they did a millennium ago, but they're here in these deep-water areas and that's why — I mean, like we say, we know more about space than we do what's going on there."

The oceans have gone largely unexplored and unmapped. Google began a project 12 years ago to map the oceans as part of a partnership with The Catlin Seaview Survey. The images can be seen on Google Maps and Google Earth.

"We have a higher propensity of silence around these five or six, I believe, deep-water areas," Burchett continued. "And so, for me it, just, um, creates a question. And then when we have Naval personnel telling me that we have these sightings and that there's these underwater craft they're chasing that are doing hundreds of miles of hour and the best we've got is something that goes a little under 40 miles an hour. So, I got a lot of questions about that stuff."

Last week, Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) showed a video seen on social media in a House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee hearing that showed a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone attempting to intercept an unidentified object off the coast of Yemen in 2024. It failed to do so, VICE reported.

Four witnesses spoke in the Sept. 9 hearing about their experiences with unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP).

USA Today noted that congressional leaders allege that the federal government knows more than is being said and is intentionally keeping Congress in the dark on the matter.

There’s Some Joker on the Phone Who Says He’s Robert Redford

Will there ever be another figure like him in Hollywood?

Robert Redford starred in the 1972 film “The Candidate.”
(Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures/Photofest)

Miles Mogulescu
Sep 18, 2025

Common Dreams

One morning my wife answered the phone and someone said, “Is Miles there? It’s Robert Redford.” My wife yelled audibly, “There’s some joker on the phone who says he’s Robert Redford.” I grabbed the phone, and it was indeed him. I had submitted a screenplay written by Larry McMurtry (“Terms of Endearment, “Lonesome Dove,” etc.) for Redford to potentially direct, and he wanted to meet in person.

We did have several meetings in his modest offices that lasted close to an hour each and were much more thoughtful and substantive than most meetings I’ve had with actors and directors. He treated me as an equal, even though he was the biggest movie star in the world and I was just a relative newcomer, having made an Oscar-nominated documentary, managed The Film Fund which made grants to indie filmmakers, and co-founded The Independent Feature Project which later morphed into Film Independent which gives the annual Independent Spirit Awards. We had in-depth discussions of McMurtry’s characters, the meaning of the location (Montana), and the screenplay’s sub-themes about the dangers of strip mining. For a variety of reasons (probably mistaken in retrospect) I went instead with Francis Coppola to produce who shortly after went bankrupt and tied up the rights to McMurty’s screenplay for 7 years, until it was finally made through HBO.

I’m mourning Redford’s passing this week, not just because I knew him, however slightly, but because of his singularity in Hollywood as an actor, director, producer, social justice/environmental activist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival.


Leaked Chats Show Alleged Kirk Killer ‘Doesn’t Fit Into Any Tidy Narrative’


Although often dismissed as an acting lightweight because of his extraordinary good looks, Redford actually brought psychological depth and insight to the characters whom he played. Despite all of his dozens of great performances, he never won an acting Oscar, although he received a directing Oscar for “Ordinary People.” (He was also awarded an honorary Oscar for “inspiration to independent and innovative filmmakers everywhere” in founding The Sundance Film Festival.)

Redford’s passing symbolizes what I believe to be the impending death of the theatrical film as we’ve known it for over a century to financialization, monopolization, and AI. The movie moguls of old may have wanted to make a profit but they also loved movies. Does David Ellison have that same passion? (I plan to be writing more about this.)

As Hollywood declines, I don’t think there will ever be another figure like Robert Redford.

“What do we do now?” Bob’s politician character fatefully asks in the final line of his film “The Candidate.”

I wish Bob were still around to help us answer that question.

I’m a Far-Left Radical. Here’s What That Means.

Sound scary?




Global activists demonstratate on the first day of the IMF-World Bank Group spring meetings, near the Washington Monument in Washington, DC on April 15, 2024.
(Photo by Chris KLEPONIS / AFP)

Thom Hartmann
Sep 18, 2025

Common Dreams

If you’re even remotely associated with the Democratic Party, whether running for office, helping out, or just breathing while Democratic, the GOP and their rightwing media attack dogs will label you a “far left radical.”

So, in the interest of clarity, let me make it official: I’m a far-left radical.

Here’s why. I believe:

— Every worker should have the right to democracy in their workplace (a union), and that nobody who works full time should have to live in poverty because the minimum wage hasn’t gone up in a stupid amount of time. I’m a far-left radical.

— Retired people shouldn’t have to pay income taxes on their Social Security (the way it was before Reagan), that morbidly rich people should pay into the system like the rest of us, that Social Security should pay enough to live modestly on, and that Medicare should cover all our expenses with minimum hassle. I’m a far-left radical.

— Every American citizen should be able to vote without a hassle, and taking away your vote should require a judge’s action to prove why, just like if a state wants to take away your gun. I’m a far-left radical.

— Speaking of guns, it’s obscene that the leading cause of death for our children is bullets, and we shouldn’t have to regularly terrorize our children with active shooter drills. We need rational gun control laws, like almost every other country in the world has. I’m a far-left radical.

— It’s crazy that three men own more wealth than the bottom half of America and pay less of their income in taxes than your average teenager. If we want the general prosperity of the 1950s, we should have the same tax rate that Republican President Dwight Eisenhower so loved: 90% on the morbidly rich after they’ve made their first few million dollars a year. I’m a far-left radical.

— Our children and grandchildren deserve a world where they needn’t fear being killed by climate-change-driven wild weather, drought, or wildfires, and the air and water are clean. And it’s nuts that we’re subsidizing the fossil fuel industry that’s preventing this. I’m a far-left radical.

— Every other country in the world helps their young people go to college; in most it’s as cheap as it was here in the 1960s when you could put yourself through school with a weekend job. Some countries even pay people to go to college, like the $100/month stipend my dad had with the GI Bill after WWII that built our scientific and business prowess. And it’s wrong to cripple entire generations with trillions in student debt. I’m a far-left radical.

— Across the 34 richest (OECD) countries in the world, over a half-million families are wiped out every year because somebody got sick. All of those families are here in America. Healthcare should be a right — like in every other developed country in the world — instead of a privilege that depends on how much money you have. I’m a far-left radical.

— Starting a small family business, once the backbone of every American town and city, should once again be possible; we need to break up the massive monopolies that have come to dominate every single industry. See: Republican Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft. Like them, I’m a far-left radical.

— Every person in America should be free to practice their own religion — or no religion — and raise their kids that way without government interference, government promotion, or their tax dollars subsidizing local megachurches’ religious schools. Like the Constitution says. I’m a far-left radical.

— People should be judged, hired, and promoted based on the quality of their minds, their work, and their integrity, not the color of their skin, their ethnicity, or their religion. I’m a far-left radical.

— Women should have the same rights and privileges as men, from the workplace to the boardroom to the voting booth. I’m a far-left radical.

— Our queer brothers and sisters should have the same rights and privileges as everybody else, and be free to live their lives without discrimination or harassment. I’m a far-left radical.

— America is a nation of immigrants, and we have been strengthened in every generation by the diversity of talent and humanity that have come here to participate in the American dream. We need comprehensive immigration reform to clean up our system. I’m a far-left radical.

These are all positions Republicans hate, and any one of them will get you labeled as a far-left radical instantly.

So, the next time some rightwing idiot attacks you for voting for Kamala Harris or having a D on your voter registration or an anti-Trump bumper sticker, simply repeat after me:
“I’m a far left radical — and proud of it!”

‘Macron Get Out!’ Unions Lead Massive Anti-Austerity Protests Across France

“We’re in a situation of injustice,” one protester said. “Workers can no longer feed themselves, students no longer have future prospects.”


At least hundreds of thousands of protesters poured into the streets across France on September 18, 2025 to protest proposed austerity measures.
(Photo by Sébastien Delogu/X)


Jessica Corbett
Sep 18, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Echoing demonstrations against French President Emmanuel Macron’s pension reforms two years ago, hundreds of thousands of people joined protests across France on Thursday, outraged by the government’s proposed austerity measures.

While the CGT trade union—one of several labor groups that pushed for the mass mobilization—put the count at over 1 million, French authorities, whose figures are usually much lower than unions, said more than 500,000 demonstrated nationwide, including 55,000 in Paris.

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Thursday’s demonstrations followed last week’s ”Block Everything” protests, which coincided with French Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s first full day in office. Macron picked Lecornu, his ally and a former defense minister, for the post after François Bayrou lost a no-confidence vote in the National Assembly over the budget plan.

Although “Lecornu quickly scrapped one of the most unpopular proposals—eliminating two public holidays—he has not ruled out the rest,” Euronews noted Thursday. “These include an overhaul of unemployment benefits, delinking pensions from inflation, and raising out-of-pocket medical costs.”

A protester named Alexandre told Euronews that “right now, we have a government that doesn’t listen to us and is even the opposite of what the population needs. A government that robs fellow citizens, and it’s important for everyone to mobilise, for the people of France who want to be dignified and who also want to give others their dignity throughout the world.”





“We’re in a situation of injustice,” he added. “Workers can no longer feed themselves, students no longer have future prospects.”

Hospital staff, railway workers, students, and teachers were among those who poured into the streets across France—including major actions in cities such as Lyon, Marseille, and Paris—rallying behind the message: “Strikes, Blockades, Macron Get Out!”

The Public Service Ministry said that nearly 11% of France’s 2.5 million state employees were on strike. According to Le Monde, “Around 1 in 6 teachers walked out of primary and secondary schools, 9 out of 10 pharmacies were shuttered, and severe disruption occurred on the Paris metro network, where only the three driverless automated lines are working normally.”



Protesters want the government to not only kill the proposed austerity measures but also spend more on public services and impose higher taxes on the wealthy. Sophie Binet, the head of the CGT union, said that “the anger is huge, and so is the determination. My message to Mr. Lecornu today is this: It’s the streets that must decide the budget.”

Multiple elected officials with La France Insoumise (LFI), a party founded by Jean-Luc Mélenchon that is now part of the Nouveau Front Populaire alliance, shared social media posts about them joining the protests.

“The mobilization of youth continues,” said Claire Lejeune, an LFI member of the National Assembly, after speaking with secondary school students in Essonne who “no longer want this policy that is wrecking their future.”

Citing “the dismantling of public education,” “war policy,” and “ecological inaction,” Lejeune said: “They are absolutely right; in the country, no one wants Lecornu or Macron anymore. I was in support of this peaceful mobilization, alongside the unions and teachers, and faced with a completely disproportionate police setup.”



Approximately 80,000 police and gendarmes were deployed for the protests. Early Thursday, LFI’s Clémence Guetté, a vice president in the National Assembly, shared footage of officers kicking and shoving a woman.

“Everywhere this morning, the repression strikes and hits without distinction or restraint,” she wrote. “The images reaching us are shameful. Here in Marseille. To everyone, be careful. France no longer has a government: Macron is the only one responsible.”

After the 1 million estimate began circulating, Guetté called the mass action “immense, everywhere, impressive,” and declared: “The people are in the streets! We are going to win.”

As Al Jazeera reported: “Across the country, Palestinian flags were visible as some protesters also stood in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza during Israel’s war on the strip. Protesters blocked the Eurolinks arms factory in Marseille, which is believed to supply equipment to Israel, while holding a large banner that read: ‘Shut down the genocidal factory.‘”



Noting the solidarity with the Palestinian people on Thursday, LFI’s Sarah Legrain called for sanctions, an arms embargo, and lifting Israel’s blockade of Gaza, where civilians are starving to death.

Later Thursday, Legrain celebrated the massive turnout and pledged that “we will keep the pressure up until Macron leaves!”

Israel Bombed My High-Rise Apartment This Week. We Barely Survived.

My cousin saved my life by warning me of the bomb that was about to fall. Now we must flee, but we have nowhere to go.

By Dalia Abu Ramadan , 

Truthout

September 17, 2025

As the towers beside mine fell, I stood in disbelief — how could the memories of countless lives suddenly turn into rubble? Even Al-kenz Tower, where I live, has lost half of its body to the destruction of its neighbors.

Dalia Abu Ramadan

This week, as I stood on my mattress, ready to collapse with exhaustion, my phone suddenly rang. It was my cousin Raneen, her voice urgent and trembling: “Dalia, have you and your family evacuated? They’re about to bomb the tower beside you — and the one across from you. Hurry!”

I immediately started hearing neighbors screaming and people running through the streets in panic. Even now, I struggle to process what happened.

Because I live in a tower surrounded by others in Al-Rimal — a neighborhood in Gaza City dominated by high-rise residential buildings — I felt as though I were living in a ghost city the moment the Israeli occupation began destroying the towers. I knew the day of displacement would come, that I would one day be forced to leave everything behind. But I never imagined the full shock and panic of this news arriving just as I settled to rest.

The Al-Rimal neighborhood has been facing periodic bombardment since April 2025, and the concerted bombing of its high-rise residential buildings started on September 10. On September 14, the day when my cousin called me, the chaos reached its peak.

With the towers reduced to rubble and life erased from the neighborhood, all its residents were forced to flee south, toward Al-Jundi Al-Majhoul Street.

Dalia Abu Ramadan

Countless residential buildings were destroyed. Even shelters were not spared. The Greek Orthodox School, run by the Greek Orthodox community but open to displaced families of all faiths, was struck despite being packed with refugees. And the Islamic University of Gaza — which had previously been targeted many times — was reduced to the ground entirely. This time, the occupation appeared determined to bury every safe haven for the displaced.




That evening, at around 6:30 pm, all I wanted was half an hour of rest. Instead, panic erupted in the streets. People were running and shouting, evacuating our residential block after representatives of the Israeli army called one of our neighbors to say they were going to bomb the massive Al-Jundi tower beside us, and the enormous Sharab residential complex directly across the street.

My family and I knew none of this — we had left our phones aside, desperate for a brief pause. Then came the call from my cousin Raneen, her voice carrying the weight of death itself. At the same time, our neighbors pounded on our door, screaming, “Hurry! There’s no time — you’ll die if you stay!”

I froze, my hands tied by fear. I looked at my sister Farah, unable to move. My mother cried out, “Your brother is outside — how will he know that our whole block is about to be wiped out?”

We decided to take the risk and go back for the belongings we couldn’t retrieve before. We climbed to the seventh floor, even though half the tower was already destroyed.

The shock was unbearable, especially for my father. We rushed down from the seventh floor, pushed forward by the screams around us. We left that tower with nothing but our lives — and our phones.

Finally, we made it out of the high-rise apartment building. I found my brother Mohammed in shock at the door of the tower, saying, “Everyone knows about the brutal bombing that’s coming!” At that moment, his friend Bilal called, equally horrified: “How can the occupation do this in a residential neighborhood packed with people?!” But Mohammed hung up, shouting, “There’s no time to listen!”

We ran with the crowds in the street, desperate to put at least 20 meters between us and the buildings, though danger still hung over us like a shadow.

We stopped in the middle of the road with dozens of other displaced families, not knowing where to go or when the bombing would begin. Then I heard one of the displaced women say, “They won’t carry out ordinary strikes this time — they will use fire belts!”

Fire belts (or “belts of fire”) are an Israeli military tactic in which a continuous chain of explosive strikes is unleased on a single area, decimating buildings along with the entire infrastructure of the targeted area.

The moment those words left her mouth, we all screamed because fire belts do not mean the destruction of one tower, or even several — but the annihilation of an entire neighborhood, its streets, and everyone in it.

We all crowded inside the shop as the streets were littered with shrapnel. Terror gripped everyone — because the bombing was only a few meters away.

Dalia Abu Ramadan

At last, a call from the Israeli military came confirming that the occupying army would not use fire belts. Perhaps they decided that the destruction of those massive buildings was already enough to bury our neighborhood in ruins.

We stood in the street with dozens of displaced families for three endless hours — hours of terror and waiting. The only words that kept circling on everyone’s lips were: “When will it end?”

A representative from the Israeli army called our neighbor from the Kolak family, warning that the strike would be massive. Our neighbor, with bitterness in his voice, asked them, “And when will you finish?” That question captured exactly what was burning inside us all: When will this nightmare end, so we can return to what is left of our homes — or rather, to the rubble?

During the brutal bombardment, I saw fear carved onto every face. Parents’ eyes were heavy with agony as they prayed nothing would happen to their children. The elderly, too weak to walk, were drained of every ounce of strength. We all longed for one thing only: for the bombing to be over.

And finally, after three hours, it ended. I will never forget how we rejoiced — despite having lost our home — simply because we were still alive. Yet joy quickly dissolved into despair when we saw what remained. Our apartment building, half-destroyed, stood dangerously unstable and unlivable, scarred by the leveling of the massive buildings that once stood beside it.

Despite everything, we decided to take the risk and go back for the belongings we couldn’t retrieve before. We climbed to the seventh floor, even though half the tower was already destroyed. Suddenly, while inside, we felt suffocated. Looking down, we saw the lower floors engulfed in flames. Panic and fear struck us, and the Palestinian Civil Defense (the body that usually dispatches emergency responders during disasters like fires) refused to come — our neighborhood had been marked a “red zone,” too dangerous to enter.


Along the road, I saw displaced families collapsed on the ground, sleeping in the open, exhausted and broken.

With the help of our neighbors, we managed to put out the fire and fled quickly into the night. At midnight, we called my uncle’s family, begging them to host us just for that one night. On the way to their house, warplanes roared overhead, the smell of gunpowder filled the air, and the streets were swallowed by terrifying darkness. Along the road, I saw displaced families collapsed on the ground, sleeping in the open, exhausted and broken.

Now we find ourselves forced to consider going south, no matter the cost. After demolishing the high-rise apartment buildings in Al-Rimal, the army threatened us with displacement, ordering us to leave. Yet even in the south, there is no safety — and no shelter awaiting us there.

I don’t know if I will ever live through moments worse than these. How much longer, world? Have you ever tried to place yourselves in the very moments we endure, or are you simply incapable of imagining them at all? I will never forgive a world that watches us die and treats us as if we are nothing.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Dalia Abu Ramadan is a Palestinian storyteller and aspiring graduate of the Islamic University of Gaza, sharing powerful narratives that reflect the strength, resilience, and challenges of life in Gaza.

Portending Another Attack, Israeli Foreign Ministry Smears Sumud Flotilla as ‘Jihadist Initiative’

One journalist said that it “feels like the response is being set up to be more severe than in the past.”


Members of the Global Sumud Flotilla wave a Palestinian flag and make a peace symbol with their hands.
(Photo by Global Sumud Flotilla)


Jessica Corbett
Sep 18, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

After Hamas urged international support for the Global Sumud Flotilla, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday signaled another potential attack by claiming on social media that the peaceful humanitarian mission to feed starving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip “is a jihadist initiative serving the terror group’s agenda.”

While Israel has not taken responsibility for recent drone attacks on the Global Sumud Flotilla—whose name means perseverance in Arabic—the incidents have raised eyebrows, given the country’s history of attacking previous ones. The foreign ministers of 16 other nations on Tuesday implored Israel not to target this flotilla, which involves activists and political leaders from dozens of countries, including eight US veterans.



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As Middle East Eye reported Thursday, Hamas—which Israel and the United States designate as a terrorist organization despite its governance of Gaza—called for escalating the global movement in solidarity with the strip “in rejection of the [Israeli] occupation’s aggression, crimes of genocide, and starvation.”

“We call for mobilizing all means to support the Global Sumud Flotilla heading to Gaza, and we warn the occupation against targeting it,” Hamas also said in a statement, part of which was quoted in the Israeli ministry’s post on X.

Responding on the same platform, journalist Séamus Malekafzali said: “Past comments from the Israeli government about the aid flotillas focused on celebrity vapidity or didn’t mention their aim at all. Now, they’re honing in on it being a supposedly terrorist instrument. Feels like the response is being set up to be more severe than in the past.”

The post came two days after Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism published a report titled “Global Sumud Flotilla”: A Humanitarian Cover With Documented Links to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.

As Brussels Signal reported Thursday:
Flotilla representatives and critics dismissed these claims as Israeli disinformation, echoing accusations leveled at prior missions, and called the report a case of “guilt by association,” reliant on photos and unverified affiliations rather than evidence of operational control.

Organizers emphasised transparent crowdfunding for aid, with no terror funding, and framed the convoy as a grassroots response to aid blockages.

Earlier this week, a commission of independent experts at the United Nations concluded that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and an investigation from The New Humanitarian found that Israeli forces have killed nearly 3,000 Palestinian aid-seekers and wounded almost 20,000 others since October 2023. As of Thursday, the overall death toll has topped 65,000, though experts warn the true tally is likely far higher.