Against the Current

Ulm Five. In the July-August Against the Current, Annette Ohme-Reinicke discussed the case of the Ulm Five as part of her story on repression in Germany. Here is an update on the trial of the Ulm Five. THE ACCUSED ARE brought in one by one in handcuffs accompanied by a guard who stays and stands… Continue reading German Trial of Pro-Palestinian Activists

Jewish Voice for Peace protest at Joe Biden’s State of the Union Speech, March 2024. “To be a Jew means always being with the oppressed and never the oppressors.” —Jewish Labor Bund leader Marek Edelman (1919-2009)(1) “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have… Continue reading The Paranoid Style in Pro-Israel Polemics

Operation Metro Surge led to mass resistance in the Twin Cities. In April 100,000 to 200,000 rallied at the State Capitol in St. Paul in a No Kings protest. FOR TWO MONTHS last winter, 4000 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) unleashed an assault on the Twin Cities with a violent roundup of immigrants, prompting… Continue reading Rampage of the Surveillance State: What’s Behind the Minneapolis Indictments?

Good news: not everyone is hurting! MIDTERM U.S. ELECTIONS are traditionally predictably unpredictable, the main question being how much loss the party of the sitting President will suffer. Conventionally that should go double or triple for the Republicans this November. But amid a deeply unpopular ruinous war, and frightening insecurity for tens of millions of… Continue reading The Looming Election

TEMPORARY PROTECTED STATUS (TPS) for more than 350,000 Haitians living in the United States was overturned by the government, following a June 25 ruling by the Supreme Court to allow the termination. On August 6 all legal work permits ended, Mass layoffs will occur, leading to Haitians losing their homes. Overnight thousands of legal residents… Continue reading Revoking TPS: Trump Escalates Racist Assault

Here Where We Live is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund By Molly Crabapple One World: New York, 2026. 433 pages, $32 hardcover. MOLLY CRABAPPLE’S HISTORY of the Jewish Bund traces its rise and fate, from its inception in 1897 through the Russian Revolution into the interwar years and ending with the Holocaust… Continue reading A Movement’s Inspiration and Legacy

IN DECEMBER 2023, former State Department official, Josh Paul told CNN anchor, Christiane Amanpour that during his tenure in the foreign service, he learned of the rape of a 13-year old boy by Israeli officers while in captivity. In response to U.S. inquiries, the Israeli Government designated the Defense for Children International, the Palestinian organization… Continue reading How Israel has used sexualized violence as a weapon of settler colonialism from 1948 to today

The Colombian National Election Council declared Abelardo de la Espriella the winner in the presidential run off June 21. When on the campaign trail he saluted to the slogan “Steadfast for the homeland,” May 25, 2026. CC0 1.0 SPRAWLING OVER THE southern hills of Bogotá, Ciudad Bolivar is a vast proletarian neighborhood of 700,000 people.… Continue reading Colombia and Latin America: A New Stage of the Struggle

The Ragged Edge of Freedom: Race, Capitalism and Class Struggle in Slavery’s Borderland By Matthew E. Stanley New York: Monthly Review Press, 2026, 469 pages, $35. TO APPRECIATE THIS wonderful and hefty volume fully, or perhaps with a combination of appreciation and dread, it might help to have lived within or near the geographic zone… Continue reading Race and Class in the United States: Coal Miner Communities

Europe is in the middle of a heatwave, which is reflected in this satellite image showing daytime land surface temperatures. The image was captured by the Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission on Tuesday 26 May. European Space Agency CC BY-SA 3.0 IN LESS THAN two months, Europe has been hit by three heatwaves that are exceptional in… Continue reading Heatwaves: anger and sadness. And hope, despite everything

THE SUPREME COURT ruled on June 30 that President Trump could not end birthright citizenship by Executive Order. In practical terms, the Court upheld the plain language of the 14th Amendment that children born in the United States are and remain U.S. citizens at birth, While the vote was 6 to 3, Vice President JD… Continue reading Supreme Court Upholds Birthright Citizenship — for now