Archive | October, 2020

Over the centuries, humans have survived tragedy through the incredible stoicism of not moving, of standing one’s ground, of resisting, of engaging in tremendous creativity. Perhaps we can use the time alone to think collectively, to reflect together on how we might reconstruct the public realm of our cities.

Michael Burawoy’s Symbolic Violence is a Marxist critique of the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. This fascinating book explores some of Bourdieu’s contradictions by staging a series of ‘conversations’ between the French sociologist and a range of important, mostly Marxist, thinkers whose writings Bourdieu ignored or dismissed in footnotes, even though he ought to have engaged explicitly with their ideas.

Freedom of speech on the Internet is all but extinct, and on the eve of the 2020 U.S. elections, a de facto “free speech court” is going to make sure it never comes back. On Facebook at least.

Settler colonialism, those colonial processes based on the aim of permanently settling metropolitan populations on indigenous lands, and–crucially–the struggle against it, have been at the centre of many of the key political developments of the last three decades.

The Social Dilemma that is currently streaming on Netflix has garnered much attention by raising a single question–how have we come to accept as normal the fact that a few hundred tech-enthusiasts in Silicon Valley has had an unprecedented impact on billions of lives around the world? Directed by Jeff Orlowski, the Social Dilemma features tech industry insiders raising ethical concerns about business models that shape our everyday digital experience.

Since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis earier this year, we have witnessed the largest mass uprising in the United States’ recent history with millions taking to the streets day in and day out.

The coup followed an election that would have resulted in Morales’ fourth term as president, the results of which were questioned by the Organisation of American States or OAS (60% of whose funding comes from the U.S. government).

A ferocious polemic by Andreas Malm, written as the worldwide lockdown took hold, summons the imagery of Soviet war communism to impress the urgency of our predicament.

A seam of cruelty runs through U.S. policy, which by its sanctions regime prevents Venezuela from open trade of its oil to import key medical equipment to help break the chain of the virus and heal those infected by it.

Here are seven counterinsurgency features of policing and the inequities in the criminal justice system.

Those who “go beyond” Karl Marx’s programme of economic liberation based on the socialisation of the means of production and “reach” a programme based on the federation of economic communes remind me of this promise of Sartre.

Alethea Warrington describes how the fossil fuels industry hopes to change its image but not its practice.

The Republican National Convention this year made fighting “cancel culture” a priority for the party. Former Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch wrote in the Wall Street Journal (7/27/20) that cancel culture was at the heart of the crisis facing academic freedom in the nation.

WEALTH distribution data are notoriously difficult to interpret. This is because variations in stock prices affect wealth distribution, so that a stock market boom suddenly makes the rich appear much richer, while a stock market collapse makes wealth distribution less unequal overnight.

Noam Chomsky says that the OPCW’s cover-up, under U.S. pressure, of a Syria chemical weapons probe raises “very severe suspicions.”

Like in Bolivia, the strength of public opinion in Chile was so immense that the government, led by Chile’s richest man Sebastian Piñera, immediately conceded.

Venezuela is no stranger to protests, registering thousands of demonstrations, rallies and strikes each year. As of October 1, about 7000 protests had occurred this year (roughly 25 a day), according to the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflicts.

David Gilbert, now 76, is in Shawangunk Correctional Facility in his 40th year of a life sentence. In the interests of justice, mercy and the good of society, he and countless others deserve to be released.

Over the past few years, digital organizing has become the hot new thing in unionization campaigns. Digital mobilization and engagement technologies have become essential to winning.

Female school students, with the support of feminist collectives, are mobilizing against sexist punishments put in place by their school management for wearing outfits deemed provocative.