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“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

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.

Leon Lederman had to auction his Nobel medal for physics to meet sky-high healthcare costs.

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?

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

Grace Blakeley dissects the failure of finance capital and calls for radical measures to take it back under democratic control.

The Trump administration’s bellicosity has combined with the volatility of the global economy to sharply accelerate what has become an international movement: ditching the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Does the concept of imperialism explain major characteristics of the capitalist world in the 21st century?

THE Indian economy is in a tailspin. This cannot be attributed only to innocence in economic matters of the command-centre of the NDA government. While that is indubitably a contributing factor, the current travails of the economy point to something deeper, namely the dead-end to which neo-liberalism has brought the economy.

Labour needs to develop a socialist strategy that goes beyond a single election manifesto. Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin look at the challenge of state transformation.

Naomi Klein gives a stirring account of the struggle against disaster capitalism in Puerto Rico after 2017’s Hurricane Maria, finds Ellen Graubart.

What might socialist development look like? Mainstream conceptions of development deem capital accumulation the bedrock upon which to achieve human development. In these conceptions of change, labouring classes are regarded as fuel for the development motor, which in turn justifies their exploitation and oppression. In contrast, how would a non-exploitative socialist development strategy be operationalised? This article advances a 10-point plan for sustainable socialist transformation.

The Egyptian-born social scientist and activist Samir Amin wrote extensively on political economy and the challenges for the peripheral capitalist states. He died in a Paris, France hospital on 12 August 2018 at the age of 86.

Haddad spoke with journalists about the aggressive remarks made by far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro.

“In a country subsumed in terror and violence, it is easier to subdue the population and enslave them to work in favor of big capital.” (Camilo Bonilla, 2018)