Leftnews.org is a collection of daily news and views from the political left-wing found around the web.

Leftnews is a project of the Citizens' Press.

Until the debt crisis broke in 1982, the World Bank held a double discourse. One, destined for the public and the indebted countries, claimed that there was nothing to worry about and that if there were problems, they would be short-lived; that was what appeared in official documents available to the public. The other discourse took place behind closed doors at internal meetings.

FAIR | With the encouragement of the state, universities are taking draconian steps to silence debate about US-backed violence in the Middle East.

Despite the fact that China’s economy continues to far outgrow all major Western economies the Western media is energetically promoting a myth of “peak China”—i.e. that China’s economy either has or is about to drastically slow down.

People's World | By almost a three-to-one ratio, Volkswagen workers at its Chattanooga, Tenn., plant gave the Auto Workers their first big win in their new drive to break the anti-union stranglehold in the Deep South. The final tally was 2,628-985 in the three-day vote.

An interview with Estela Aranha | After Elon Musk boosted conspiracies about the persecution of Bolsonaro supporters, Brazil’s far-right was given a shot in the arm. The lawyer who debunked the story speaks about the new threat to Brazilian democracy: Big Tech.

Russian political prisoner Boris Kagarlitsky writes in Jacobin from his jail cell at Zelenograd SIZO-12. He discusses the need for an alternative to the “individualist logic of modern liberalism and the totalitarian aggressiveness of the new conservatism.”

The Breach | Riding by riding, a cross-country network of Palestinian solidarity organizing pushed Liberal MPs to respond to their constituents

If the carbon tax is a dead corpse that keeps on dying, let’s make livelier offers. The transition to a sustainable energy system should have been rooted in class from the start. Let’s stop playing rhetorical tricks on ourselves, and fill the political void with actionable proposals. Along the way, we might even heal social wounds as well as environmental ones.

More and more ECEs and care givers are leaving the sector in search of better paid work. Current early childhood education students are uncertain about their futures. Many are opting out of pursuing a career in this field altogether. Indeed, the province could be short 8,500 ECEs by 2026. Ontario needs to do better and pay its ECEs and child care workers a decent wage.

Media co-ops and employee-owned media have been growing around the world in recent years. Majority shareholders of the leading French daily Le Monde announced last year that they would donate it to a foundation controlled by its journalists and other employees. As news media in Canada continue to crumble, going the co-op route makes increasing sense for their displaced workers.

The great science fiction fear has always been of AI escaping human control and the machines taking over, as in The Matrix films. The story of Lavender suggests, on the contrary, that the real danger arises when the awesome data-crunching capacities of AI are put in the hands of human beings. Derek Sayer on Israel’s human targeting software and the banality of evil.

For Global South economies deep in unrepayable debt, the current choice is: rescheduling often on even harsher terms; or forced stagnation of the economy to pay back foreign creditors. From the Magnificent Seven to the Desperate Hundred.

The Breach | Professor Jemima Pierre dissects Canada’s participation in a 20-year debacle of military occupations and failed elections in Haiti

The Maple | HonestReporting Canada’s campus media fellowship offers $1,000 to students, including journalists, to advocate for Israel.

Jacobin | Many observers of Haiti’s social disorder today maintain that the island country has always been dysfunctional. But the poverty and chaos in Haiti is of recent vintage, the product of disastrous decisions by political elites and heavy-handed US interference.

Jacobin | At a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and a Mercedes factory in Vance, Alabama, the United Auto Workers have filed for union elections. If the UAW wins, it would be a major victory against anti-union bulwarks.

Tricontinental | Amid the intensifying water crisis that plagues billions of people across the world, Israel is using water as a weapon in its war against Palestinians by denying access and destroying infrastructure.

Declassified visits Belfast as Ireland appears on the edge of something truly historic, with most agreeing that Brexit was the game-changer.

This lyrical vignette from the recently departed Paul Burkett is the author’s final, posthumously published piece for Monthly Review. In it, the eminent ecological economist and jazz musician muses on the nature of creativity, technology, and the corporatization of music—and the struggle to decommodify it, freeing musicians and their craft from the confines of capitalism.