Archive | August, 2024

The world’s largest cannabis producer aims to encourage legal cultivation of the plant and export it for industrial or medical purposes

Two secretive prison units that used to almost exclusively house people said to be connected to terrorism have expanded by nearly 80 percent in 15 years, and a new unit is on the way. Formerly incarcerated people say they have been used to punish dissent.

Our country must move beyond symbolic representations of women like Kali, Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati, and instead offer genuine respect and equality.

Diane Ravitch, author of “Slaying Goliath: The Passionate Resistance to Privatization and the Fight to Save America’s Public Schools”, has dug deep to uncover who the leaders of the nationwide public school privatization movement are and assembled a list that includes: Jeff Bezos, the Koch Brothers, the Walton Family, Bill Gates, Betsy DeVos, Michael Bloomberg, Laurene Powell Jobs, Eli Broad, Reed Hastings, and the Chamber of Commerce.

John Bellamy Foster points to “Beyond Leviathan” by István Mészáros for insights into the ancient origins of the state and nature of its evolution over thousands of years, the necessity to move beyond the state and how to meet that challenge.

Kyle Ferrana details the brutal legacy of U.S. imperialism in the Pacific.

The French economist J B Say had believed that there could never be a problem of aggregate demand in any economy, that whatever was produced was ipso facto demanded.

Cybersecurity has become a central element in Venezuela, in a context where computer attacks have not ceased since the presidential elections.

U.S. Big Tech corporations are like the feudal landlords of medieval Europe. These Silicon Valley monopolies own the digital land that the global economy is built on, and are charging higher and higher rents to use their privatized infrastructure.

The Israel Defense Forces has decided to downsize the Oketz unit, Unit 7142, ahead of its cancellation. The unit for dogs and their trainers has been suffering from a shortage recently.

Many of you know that the Yiddish word chutzpah means extreme self-confidence or audacity.

What just happened?

On Friday, ALBA Movements, an organization bringing together grassroots movements from 25 countries in the Americas, issued a statement rejecting the claims made by the presidents of Colombia and Brazil, who proposed the formation of a cohabitation government in Venezuela, where President Nicolas Maduro was re-elected in the July 28 elections. 

Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri on Saturday dismissed optimistic talk by U.S. President Joe Biden that a Gaza truce is nearer after negotiations in the Gulf emirate of Qatar.

The call for the nationwide vigil to “reclaim the night” was given by the left groups following the rape and murder of a medical staff on duty in Kolkata last week.

Fascism is an insufficient term, as it denies the intimacy between liberal and far right forces. In this week’s newsletter, we present ten theses to understand this ‘intimate embrace’ and the rise of this far right of a special type.

Recent student-led campus encampments in solidarity with Palestine prompted considerable media conversation.

Gus Speth – “My family and I spent 25 years in Washington DC. They were good years, and every morning I began with coffee and The Washington Post. The newspaper was a wonderful companion—and reliably progressive. But there is something going on there now on the editorial board that I find, well, weird.”

The following text navigates through the trans health articles and books published between 1886 and 1966 which appear to have had the greatest influence on the writing of “The Transsexual Phenomenon”, ultimately posing the question: how did we get here?

The ICJ’s authoritative ruling on the Israeli occupation makes clear that boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israeli occupation, colonization, and apartheid are not only a moral imperative but also a legal obligation.