Protests spread across U.S. against ICE terror
The Guardian, 1/24–Large protests spread across US cities on Saturday – including Minneapolis, New York City, San Francisco, Boston and Providence, Rhode Island – after 37-year-old Alex Pretti, a registered nurse living in Minneapolis, was shot dead by federal agents…just one day after thousands marched through the streets of Minneapolis to protest against…ICE…Thousands more rallied in Union Square in New York City…In Washington DC, a giant crowd formed...Across the country in San Francisco, hundreds of people gathered in the city’s downtown as the sun began to set… further south, hundreds of people took to the streets of downtown Los Angeles…In Providence, hundreds showed up to protest…
Racist capitalist economics still at work
CEPR, 1/14–In 2025, Black America needed about 1.8 million more people working to have the same employment rates (employment-to-population ratios) as White America (Table 1). This Black jobs deficit cost Black America about $87 billion in lost income…Researchers continue to find strong evidence of anti-Black bias in hiring. Even among the formerly incarcerated, White individuals are more likely to find employment than Black individuals. Persistent racial discrimination in the labor market can lead Black individuals to become discouraged and not actively attempt to find work…
Iran economy and rulers at risk of collapse
Foreign Affairs, 1/13–the Islamic Republic appears more fragile than ever after last June’s 12-day war. The regime seems incapable of addressing the root causes of the economic crisis that has driven its people to the streets…food prices overall have jumped by 72 percent since January 2025. An Iranian government spokesman warned that they could rise by another 20 to 30 percent in the coming weeks…Tehran…has instructed that free-market prices should prevail…Educated youth and professionals have been hit especially hard…Major rivers supplying Isfahan and Shiraz with water now routinely run dry, and Tehran is running out of water.
Israeli settlers destroy and replace Palestinian villagers
Al Jazeera, 1/22–... the Israeli settlers’ celebrations have finished for the day. But the village of Ras Ein al-Auja, situated in the eastern West Bank’s Jericho governorate, has been all but wiped out. The village was one of the last Palestinian herding communities in this part of the Jordan Valley, but now, the herders’ sheep have gone – most of them stolen or poisoned by settlers or sold off by villagers under pressure. Their water has been cut off – the Ras Ein spring declared off-limits by the neighbouring settlers for the past year…This…marks the largest expulsion from a single Bedouin community as a result of Israeli settler violence in modern times...
Farmers suffer through overproduction crisis
New York Times, 1/25–“What am I supposed to do with 2.2 million pounds of rice?”...raising his voice…over the noisy industrial fans drying the rice on his farm in Merigold, Miss…Across the country, farmers are struggling. Prices for nearly every major crop are below what it costs to grow them…a group representing farmers, participants floated the idea of a government program that would pay producers to destroy the harvested rice sitting in their bins. A similar program was put in place during the 1980s farm crisis, when the Agriculture Department paid farmers to idle land and reduce huge surpluses of crops…India, the world’s largest producer of rice… [is] flooding the world with rice.
Nigerian workers at risk of starvation
ABC News, 1/22–The U.N. World Food Program said Tuesday that more than a million people in northeastern Nigeria could lose access to emergency food and nutrition aid within weeks unless funding is secured, as violence and hunger surge in the region…The food agency of the United Nations said in a statement it will sharply scale back assistance, limiting it to only 72,000 people in February, down from 1.3 million assisted during last year’s lean season, which runs from May to October…35 million people are likely to experience severe hunger in Nigeria this year, the highest figure on the continent and the largest recorded since the agency began collecting data in the country.