When I was 19 years old, I traveled to Israel to find long-lost relatives who had survived the Holocaust. While I was there, I was “picked up” on the street by an ultra-orthodox woman who offered me free lodging in a hostel exclusively for Jewish travelers in the Old City of Jerusalem. I was a broke teenager at the time, so I said yes. It was Hanukkah, and all across the Jewish Quarter…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
What can be done to stop another Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, and their network of people who participated in the abuse of more than 1,000 girls and young women? Right now, the U.S. right and carceral liberal forces (including many Democrats) are focused heavily on demanding that the Department of Justice release the grand jury files related to the Epstein case — as though this “smoking gun”…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On September 2, 2025, a small fishing boat carrying 11 people was targeted by a U.S. Reaper drone off the coast of Venezuela. Hellfire missiles were fired. Two survivors clung to the wreckage. Their identities and motives were unknown. Their behavior showed no hostility. Moments later, the drone operator launched a second strike — the so-called “double tap” — killing the final survivors.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Seven people, all being held on remand pending trial for allegedly taking action in solidarity with Palestine, are on hunger strike in British prisons. Their names are Qesser Zuhrah, Amu Gib, Heba Muraisi, Jon Cink, T Hoxha, Kamran Ahmed, and Muhammad Umer Khalid. An eighth prisoner, Lewie Chiaramello, who is diabetic, is also on a partial hunger strike, refusing food every other day at serious…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy, which formalizes the ideological shift that U.S. foreign policy has taken under Trump 2.0, has won praise in Moscow but stunned European allies. Indeed, the strategy document, which was published on December 4, 2025, sent political shock waves through the whole of Europe as European leaders and political analysts grasped how Trump’s radical…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
The Trump administration is one of the most anti-labor administrations in modern U.S. history — it has attempted to decertify the union representation of more than 1 million federal employees. Trump has also fired key members of the National Labor Relations Board, thus rendering it largely non-functional. Moreover his administration has come out against rules requiring disabled workers all be paid…
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As Israel’s genocide in Gaza drags into its third year, more than two million Palestinians have been hemmed in by a military border. In “East Gaza,” as the Israeli Defense Forces-controlled zone east of the border has become known, more than two million Palestinians live surrounded by rubble, decaying corpses, and unexploded munitions, as they struggle to survive in makeshift shelters without…
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The aftermath of the November 26, 2025, shooting in Washington, D.C. has underscored yet again that we live in a white supremacist world where people of color are target practice for racist leaders, and where the actions of one are enough to incur collective punishment against all. As Emran Feroz laid out in his recent Truthout op-ed, abundant evidence suggests that the suspected shooter…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
In recent months, the Trump administration has escalated a decades-long campaign against the Venezuelan government and people. The renewed, intensifying threats of regime change, justified through false or inflated claims that Nicolás Maduro, its president, is directing narco-terrorism against the United States, serve as a convenient pretext for deeper and more direct intervention.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Two months after Donald Trump’s second inauguration, the White House released the text of a sprawling executive order allegedly designed to ensure the integrity of U.S. elections. It demanded that states share their voter rolls with federal officials; mandated onerous proof-of-citizenship rules for people registering to vote (rules which didn’t include drivers’ licenses as valid forms of ID for…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Public outrage is mounting over the Trump administration’s September 2 “double tap” strike, in which the U.S. military bombed a small boat for a second time to kill the survivors of a first strike. This particular strike has garnered significant attention due to its clear violation of U.S. and international law because shipwrecked sailors should never be targeted. But it is crucial to note that…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Consistent with the United States’ continued slide into an economy powered almost entirely by LLM slop, financialization, and ever-pervasive exploitative gambling, “prediction market app” Kalshi “entered into an official partnership” with CNN this week to bring their “data to CNN’s journalism across its television, digital and social channels.” Soon, CNN will run live odds on world events where…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Pennsylvania State Sen. Amanda Capalletti recently announced her intention to propose legislation that would allow people convicted of crimes related to resisting their own abuse to ask for shorter sentences. The legislation also enables those already serving long sentences for crimes substantially related to their experiences of violence to seek resentencing. The law is meant to offer hope…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
We are living through a coordinated assault on knowledge. In a moment when Big Tech is waging war on complex thought, a fascist government is targeting higher education, and the media landscape is being demolished by the same oligarchs driving this era of smash-and-grab politics, libraries are under-appreciated outposts of struggle, sharing and survival. They are sites of refuge…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
After two National Guard soldiers were shot in Washington, D.C. last week, several U.S. pundits and politicians were quick with their descriptions of the alleged attacker. They erroneously assumed that he brought his “culture” or “society” to the United States. “You are not just importing individuals. You are importing societies… At scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the…
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When I was a child, I used to naively invert the colors of the Palestinian flag — green in the place of red, red where black should be, and black replacing the green. Back then, I didn’t realize that I was imagining an entirely different country: Sudan. Little did I know that one day both of us would be dragged into the same campaign of elimination, exposed to the same colonial ideologies…
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Women are the fastest growing incarcerated population in the United States. The female incarceration rate has ballooned by more than 700% since 1980 — 172,700 women and girls were in jail or prison in 2023. A quarter of these (46,300) are confined because they were either refused bail or cannot afford it, rather than because they were found guilty of a crime. Over 14,000 are awaiting trial for…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
I looked at the slave shackles in the exhibit. My ancestors wore chains like this one. A bone-deep sorrow hit. When I researched my family history, names began to vanish as I traced it to Indigenous and African slavery. Here, right in front of me was material proof of the horror they survived. What is my responsibility to them? The Slavery and Freedom exhibit at the National Museum of African…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Union busters have often earned 20 times more than the workers they seek to “persuade” not to unionize. Operating largely in the shadows with minimal regulatory oversight, these so-called “persuaders” face little accountability for their tactics. The union-busting industry thrives on secrecy, with consultants exploiting loopholes in disclosure requirements and filing mandatory reports months…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A new vision for the United States is being forced into place — one rooted not in liberty or justice, but in subjugation and the quiet normalization and acceptance of fascism. You can see it in the memes, the slogans, and the curated nostalgia flooding social media accounts aligned with the Trump administration. You can see it in the way frontier and 1950s iconographies have returned not as…
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The post Public Transit Is Nation-Building. Our Federal Budget Should Reflect That. appeared first on Environmental Defence.
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In late October, Hurricane Melissa (that should have been called “Godzilla”) battered western Jamaica with 185-mile-an-hour winds. It tossed the roofs of buildings about like splintering javelins, demolished municipal buildings and hospitals, snapped telephone poles like matchsticks, flattened crops, and dumped torrential floodwaters everywhere, leaving $8 billion in damage. That Category 5 storm’…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
A bipartisan group of 13 governors is pushing to deregulate the permitting of energy infrastructure in the U.S., arguing that doing so is necessary to “win the AI race, lower costs for consumers, and responsibly develop the advanced energy sources of the future.” But in reality, deregulating energy infrastructure construction would be a disastrous mistake that would increase greenhouse gas…
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In 1947, the United Nations General Assembly committed the UN’s original sin when it partitioned Palestine to create Israel. This launched the Nakba, the ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous people, and the establishment of a settler colonial state. Now, 78 years later, the UN Security Council has committed the UN’s second cardinal sin. It enshrined Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian…
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Rooting out terrorism and antisemitism was the supposed reason that plainclothed ICE agents arrested doctoral student Rümeysa Öztürk on a street in Somerville, Massachusetts, after she coauthored an op-ed calling on Tufts University to divest from companies with ties to Israel due to the killing and starvation of Palestinian civilians. There is an international movement to boycott, sanction…
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In 2025, over a thousand anti-transgender bills were introduced in 49 states across the country. Of those, over 100 have passed so far this year, continuing the trend of five consecutive record-breaking years of anti-trans legislation from 2020 to 2024. In recent years, I have watched these state-level attacks on transgender people spread across more than half the country, with many of these…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
I love science fiction movies. Whether they’re big-budget blockbusters or cheesy schlock, I can’t help but become enthralled by fantastic technology and alien worlds. The best thing about science fiction as a genre is its ability to blend with others. My favorite horror film—1984’s The Terminator—seamlessly fuses horror with sci-fi, resulting in an action-packed thriller that raises deep questions about humanity, our propensity for creating weapons, and fate.
Everything about The Terminator is cool. Arnold Schwarzenegger looks badass in leather and sunglasses. A dystopian future, killer robots, and time travel would elevate any movie, but The Terminator doesn’t rely on special effects as a crutch—it uses them to build suspense. That suspense turns to terror when the Terminator’s flesh burns away in a fire, revealing its metallic skeleton.
Artists take inspiration from wherever they can. Writer-director James Cameron conceived The Terminator after a nightmare featuring a metallic skeleton crawling from flames. The Terminator’s use of phones to locate its target reflected public fears about privacy and wiretapping at the time. The film’s post-apocalyptic future, triggered by nuclear war, was clearly influenced by Cold War anxieties.
The Terminator is sent back to 1984 from a dystopian future where Skynet, an evil artificial intelligence, seeks to exterminate humanity. Skynet turns humanity’s own nuclear missiles against them, manufactures Terminators, and even builds a time machine. Its power stems from control over production, mirroring real-world class power dynamics.
I doubt millionaire James Cameron consciously cared about class analysis, but artists often embed their biases unintentionally. Skynet represents the military-industrial complex, which prioritizes war machines over human needs. Instead of hospitals, we get drones; instead of doctors, soldiers. The system thrives on conflict, not care.
Artists can recognize and correct their biases. In the first Terminator, Sarah Connor is a clichéd damsel in distress, lacking agency while the male protagonists—the Terminator and resistance fighter Kyle Reese—battle around her. Her sole purpose is to survive long enough to birth John Connor, the future resistance leader. She was just supposed to stay out of the way so men could do everything.
By Terminator 2, Sarah transforms into a hardened warrior—muscular, armed, and proactive. She drives the plot by attempting to destroy Skynet preemptively, something the men don’t do. Linda Hamilton’s physical transformation was so extreme her sister played Sarah in flashbacks. Cameron’s shift not only improved the story but also challenged misogynistic tropes.
What people truly want is a Star Trek future: no more wars on Earth, technology focused on exploration, free food, and advanced medicine. This is the kind of future we can build for ourselves. We can leave our children a world where technology like that is within our grasp.
In Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Skynet sends a new more advanced T-1000 Terminator to kill John Connor. The resistance reprogrammed an Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator and sent it to the past with Skynet’s own time travel technology. Just like a real guerilla movement the resistance isn’t as interested in research and development as it is in using what its enemy has already developed.
The future resistance sent Kyle Reese back to 1984 in the first movie. John Conner gave a picture of his mother to Kyle Reese well before he sent Reese back to protect his mother. The first Terminator movie ends with Sarah getting her picture taken. Its the same picture that Kyle Reese will have of her in the future. This time travel loop where an event is caused by another event that was caused by the first event is called a bootstrap paradox.
In Judgement Day we find out Skynet was built using the remains of the Terminator from the first movie. There’s a ton of bootstrap paradoxes in these films that makes it seem like judgement day is inevitable. But time travel paradoxes are fictional plot devices, judgement day is not inevitable. As the film repeats “no fate but what we make for ourselves.”
Larger than life adversaries like a time traveling killer robot or the military industrial complex can be beaten. The first Terminator shows how to defeat a seemingly unstoppable foe: weaken it step by step. A truck cripples the Terminator, fire strips its flesh, a bomb mangles its body, and a hydraulic press finishes it off. Similarly, the military-industrial complex can be dismantled—through persistence, solidarity, and class consciousness.
We can overcome Skynet. We can build a Star Trek future. Knowledge is power, and collective action is our weapon. Without class analysis, Skynet’s rise seems inevitable; with it, any future is possible.
So much of artistic expression ends up being grim or dystopian, this is because a lot of artists lack class consciousness. But for every nuclear apocalypse there’s a Star Trek where the future looks brighter. The inspiration we get from fiction stories is real inspiration, and it can really help to unite us.
Early humans told stories around campfires, they expressed themselves through cave paintings. We are social beings and we have always valued our ability to connect with each other over our artistic expression. As Kim Il-sung put it in On The Juche Idea “Man is a being with creativity, that is, a creative social being.” They truly value art in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, that’s why they added a paintbrush to their hammer and sickle flag.
We can start building a resistance to the forces of evil. For every Darth Vader there’s a Luke Skywalker, for every Sauron there’s a Frodo Baggins, for every Skynet there’s an entire resistance ready to challenge it. The resistance didn’t start out with the ability to challenge Skynet, they started small and built themselves up over time. Just like Sarah Connor we can go from being at the mercy of production into those who control production. That’s what a revolution is, it’s a process where a class goes from being subservient into a class that can rule over itself. We can make that revolution happen. Our destiny is not pre-determined; there is no fate but what we make for ourselves.
This post was originally published on Real Progressives.
Children at my son’s Spanish immersion preschool in Chicago bore witness to a teacher being violently assaulted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who entered their school, armed with weapons, earlier this month. One of the school’s infant teachers, Diana Santillana Galeano — known to the students as “Miss Diana” — was abducted by ICE on the morning of November 5 as she…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Children at my son’s Spanish immersion preschool in Chicago bore witness to a teacher being violently assaulted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who entered their school, armed with weapons, earlier this month. One of the school’s infant teachers, Diana Santillana Galeano — known to the students as “Miss Diana” — was abducted by ICE on the morning of November 5 as she…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
