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Courts, Kavanaugh, and constitutional hardball
On November 22, 1895 Eugene V. Debs stepped outside of the Woodstock Jail in Chicago, where he had been imprisoned for six months. Debs, the President of the American Railway Union, had been one of the leaders of the Pullman Strike of 1894, considered by many to be the first major national strike in American labor history.
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Mexican farmers accuse Volkswagen “Hail Cannons” of causing drought as climate catastrophes and weather engineering proliferate
In this MPN exclusive, we spoke to Zapatista Indigenous Autonomous Movement organizer Alfredo Lozano Ortega and Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster about the corporate abuse of weather modifying technology and the ecological damage it produces.
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Cassandra calls
Eye-catching in Chemnitz were not just Hitler salutes under the statue of Karl Marx but the friendly cooperation between leaders of nasty PEGIDA anti-Islam movement, local pro-fascist thugs and a representative of the racist Alternative for Germany party (AfD).
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Puerto Rico governor calls for ‘elimination’ of Venezuela’s government
GOVERNOR of Puerto Rico Ricardo Rossello has called for the “elimination” of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and announced that a summit of opposition leaders will be held on the occupied U.S. island later this month.
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The power of collective joy
In a world of isolation and a left which tends towards despondency, collective joy is our weapon against neoliberalism. Sam Swann reflects on The World Transformed 2018
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The ‘Christine Lagarde Memo’
This secret memo was discovered in the waste basket of a high-ranking staffer in the European Commission. The memo from “the Coalition” begins “Dear Angela, Teresa, Emmanuel…” and has a further list of first names—heads of state and secretaries or ministers of finance, health and human services—were mostly scribbled over with marker.
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William Blum takes on the Washington Post again, in the person of columnist Max Boot, formerly of the Wall Street Journal
“We are the good guys. We’re not the perfect guys, but we are the good guys. And so we’re doing what we can.” – U.S. secretary of Defense, James Mattis
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“A lot remains to be done”: interview with Aleida Guevara
“There are two things I will never accept, colonialism and racism. What many people do not realize is that Europe’s wealth is built on five centuries of exploitation of third world peoples, and that there is something like a historical obligation of reparation, of solidarity at least.”
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Duterte’s tyranny in the Philippines is an obstacle to people’s development
On March 16th and 17th last year the Philippine armed forces dropped bombs containing illegal and toxic white phosphorus on towns in Abra province. The pasturelands and communal forests of farmers and indigenous peoples were burnt, and daily activities ground to a halt as widespread fear set in among the population.
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Seven things you should know about the IPCC 1.5°C Special Report and its Policy implications
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is soon going to release an important report to help inform global efforts to limit climate change. The special report details the impacts of a global average temperature increase of 1.5°C relative to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, and pathways to limit temperature increase to that level.
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U.S. Nobel winner, who sold his medal to meet medical bills, dies
Leon Lederman had to auction his Nobel medal for physics to meet sky-high healthcare costs.
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Public letter on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, 2018
On October 8th, we will be returning to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) for the third year in a row. Unlike the guided anti-Columbus tours of previous years, the next visit to the museum’s dusty cultural halls will be fully participatory and will culminate with a People’s Assembly. Why the change of plan?
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Sharing, not selling: Marx against value
The originality of Marx’s Capital is often underestimated. Countless commentaries have appeared, but only a few have taken the full measure of Capital’s truly unique and counter-intuitive outlook. Critics generally assume that Marx was pursuing familiar questions of economics or philosophy in a fresh way–that his aim was to explain profits, history, or ontology.
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There is no reason for the U.S. to increase sanctions on Iran
The UN’s position against Iran is in bad faith. All the member states and the UN secretariat know that Iran has no nuclear weapons programme. Yet, they have allowed the U.S. and Israel to push against Iran.
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A guide to principled anti-Zionism
An optimal anti-Zionism supersedes Palestine’s geography. It likewise transcends ethnocentric interests. Anti-Zionism is a politics and a discourse, sometimes a vocation, but at its best it is also a sensibility, one attuned to disorder and upheaval. It is a commitment to unimaginable possibilities—that is, to realizing what arbiters of common sense like to call “impossible.”
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Cybersocialism
Project Cybersyn was an ambitious political and economic project introduced by Salvador Allende’s socialist government in Chile in the early 1970s. It was an experiment of socialist design that attempted to harness pioneering cybernetic models of complex systems to run a national economy.
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Theory 101: class struggle in the age of U.S. imperial decline
The focus on separate “identities” has led to numerous academic theories and non-profit career opportunities but no real power for oppressed and working-class people.
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Solidarity is more than a slogan
The United Nations General Assembly opened its 73rd session this year with a massive downpour in New York City. Flood-waters licked at the edge of the city, as world leaders gathered inside the 18 acres of land on the Turtle Bay area of Manhattan island. U.S. President Donald Trump–as usual–stole all the headlines.
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A critical look at China’s One Belt, One Road initiative
China’s growth rate remains impressive, even if on the decline. The country’s continuing economic gains owe much to the Chinese state’s (1) still considerable ability to direct the activity of critical economic enterprises and sectors such as finance, (2) commitment to policies of economic expansion, and (3) flexibility in economic strategy.
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Market meltdown
Grace Blakeley dissects the failure of finance capital and calls for radical measures to take it back under democratic control.