Former Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his prosecutors are reportedly finalizing the details of a plea deal that would practically water down, shelve, or drop altogether all three major corruption cases that have led to his high-profile trial in May 2020. If such news actualizes, Israel would officially sink to a new low in terms of political nepotism and corruption. 

In the weeks following the one-year anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, there were countless editorials, think pieces and discussions in the media about whether or not American democracy was “dead.” From Fareed Zakaria on CNN to Ann Fisher on WOSU, news personalities and politicos alike tried to address the question, with answers ranging from “no, but it does need attention,” to “it’s basically on life support,” to “I don’t know how to answer that!” Strangely enough, no one offered a hearty “hell yeah, it’s dead,” which makes me think that no one really knows the answer. But this is understandable. After all, it must be hard for political commentators to admit that the American experiment –– once a robust representative democratic republic with grand ideals at its core –– is in fact, finally dead.

Wednesday, January 26, 7pm, this on-line event requires advance registration

Socialist Alternative leader and Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant has won a fourth election: a winter special face-off against a racist, right-wing recall backed by big business. What can we learn from this victory? How can we apply these lessons from Kshama’s successful independent working-class politics?

RSVP for this event by clicking “Going” on this “Facebook event” page.

Hosted by Socialist Alternative Cincinnati and Columbus Socialist Alternative.

The drama currently unfolding in which the Biden Administration is doing everything it can to provoke a war with Russia over Ukraine is possibly the most frightening foreign policy misadventure since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1967 Lyndon Johnson attempt to sink the USS Liberty and blame it on Egypt, either of which could have gone nuclear. I can well recall the Robert Heinlein sci-fi book The Puppet Masters, later made into a movie, which described how alien-slugs, arriving by way of a flying saucer landing in Iowa, invaded the earth and parasitically attached themselves to the central nervous systems of humans and became able to completely control their minds. What the humans know, they know. What the slugs want, no matter what, the human will do. And the tale gets really scary in geopolitical terms when some Secret Service Agents are “occupied” by the invaders and they are thereby poised to capture the President of the United States. I would point out that the movie came out when Bill Clinton was president, which should have provoked some concerns about whether it was fact or fiction.

If students cannot rely on their university to pay them a living wage and provide good working conditions, what do they do? This is the question many student workers are asking themselves at Ohio State University (OSU). While tuition, housing, food, and transportation costs continue to rise, wages for student workers employed by OSU remain stagnant. It is apparent to them that it is time to fight back.

On Friday January 21st, in collaboration with student workers, Students for a Democratic Society at Ohio State (SDSOSU) and Young Democratic Socialists at Ohio State (YDSOSU) held a protest to raise demands towards the university that student workers desperately need. They included a $15-an-hour minimum wage, free parking for student workers, paid sick leave, holiday pay, more frequent and higher raises, and higher work hour limits for international and DACA (a federal program to protect immigrant youth from deportation) students.