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Israel sentences Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour to 5 months in prison over poem
An Israeli district court sentenced Palestinian poet Dareen Tatour, 36, to five months in prison and a six-month suspended sentence on Tuesday for posting a poem she wrote to social media in 2015.
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Why Russia is growing gold reserves to record levels
According to Russian Central Bank figures, Russia’s total gold reserves amounted to 1,944 tons as of June 2018, with the regulator pointing to a steady rise in holdings of the precious metal over the last decade (total gold reserves amounted to less than 500 tons in 2008). In the same period, the share of gold in Russia’s total reserves grew from just 2.5 percent to over 17 percent.
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Recommended reading from Mumia
The nation’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, has high praise for historian Robin D.G. Kelly’s book Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Depression.
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Freedom rider: blacks need to stop calling the enemy “we” and “us”
It is a sad to see black people speak of themselves in the first person when referencing the United States government, its intelligence agencies, and war making apparatus. Two years of relentless war propaganda has conflated opposition to Trump with the interests of the ruling elites.
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The sanctification of NATO
Claims that U.S. President Donald Trump is undermining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by criticizing some of its members and having a cordial meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin have sent establishment media into a frenzy to sanctify NATO as a force for peace and democracy.
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The origins of women’s oppression–a defence of Engels and a new departure
Frederick Engels’ book The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (hereafter The Origin) was published in 1884. In it he argued that early humans had lived in non-hierarchical societies in which women were not oppressed.
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Did developing countries recover from the global crisis?
A decade after the Global Financial Crisis, developing countries still bear the scars in the form of lower growth and investment rates.
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Gender as colonial object
The spread of Western gender categories through European colonization.
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Cuba celebrates 65th anniversary of the revolution
CUBA celebrated the 65th anniversary of the revolution today as First Secretary of the Communist Party Raul Castro vowed that Cubans would remain loyal to the ideas of Fidel despite “Yankee imperialism” and economic blockades.
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Democratic Party politics 101 with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the corporate media
Some who read my writing may ask, “why don’t you criticize the Republicans as much as you do the Democrats?” My response to such a question is that it should be obvious by now which of the two corporate parties currently holds the Black polity and working class “constituencies” generally in a state of political captivity.
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Clinton democrats embrace losing strategy to combat ‘Sanders-style socialism’ in midterms
Democratic Party elites are increasingly concerned the midterm elections will be a “base election” and make their centrist politics even more irrelevant, as insurgent candidates like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez garner widespread support.
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Deepening our understanding of social reproduction theory
When we embarked on our project to explore Social Reproduction Theory (SRT), at the back of our mind was the phrase from the Marx and Engels’ German Ideology, ‘[human beings] must be in a position to live in order to be able to ‘make history’’.
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Disappearing poverty
In international human rights law, a “forced disappearance” occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization (or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization), followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person’s fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law.
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It’s been over a year since MSNBC has mentioned U.S. war in Yemen
Why is the No. 1 outlet of alleged anti-Trump #resistance completely ignoring his most devastating war?
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UK police to arrest Julian Assange
Britain is doing Washington’s dirty work and given the heavily increased ‘political chatter’ on Assange’s fate–it is quite likely the British government is looking for public reaction to be muted enough to simply arrest him, go through the motions and send Assange to certain solitary confinement on death row.
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U.S. manufacturing is far from healthy and the main reason appears to be globalization
Public awareness and acceptance of the negative consequences of corporate-driven globalization on U.S. workers has grown dramatically over the last years, aided in part by Donald Trump’s attacks on trade agreements like NAFTA.
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Liberalism and empire
Paul Krugman had a column a few weeks ago called “Fall of the American Empire” about Donald Trump’s repudiation of “the values that actually made America great.” It is worth analyzing, because it is amusing and illustrative.
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Cuban constitutions, yesterday and today
An eminent university professor reviews Cuba’s constitutional history and fundamental principles guiding the current process of reform.
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Correcting the record: what is really happening in Nicaragua?
There is a great deal of false and inaccurate information about Nicaragua in the media. Even on the left, some have simply repeated the dubious claims of CNN and Nicaragua’s oligarchic media to support the removal of President Ortega. The narrative of nonviolent protesters versus anti-riot squads and pro-government paramilitaries has not been questioned by international media.
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Russiagate is a ruling class diversion
So this is what we can look forward to in the long twilight of a shrinking U.S. empire: the shrieks of a delirious ruling class, concocting endless diversions from the central reality of late-stage capitalism’s inability to offer the people anything but widening wars and deepening austerity.