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The political defeat of the Venezuelan right-wing
Foreign support to the Venezuelan right in the form of money, weapons, and propaganda is ongoing. Some oil corporations, such as Exxon Mobil, are directly involved in destabilization policies.
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The need for a new U.S. foreign policy toward North Korea
USA-North Korean relations remain very tense even though the threat of a new Korean War has receded. Yet the U.S. government remains determined to tighten economic sanctions on North Korea and continues to plan for a military strike aimed at destroying the country’s nuclear infrastructure.
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The worst of Donald Trump’s toxic agenda is lying in wait
The same theories of racial hierarchy that have been used historically to justify violent thefts in the name of building the industrial age are surging to the surface as the system of wealth and comfort they constructed starts to unravel on multiple fronts simultaneously. Trump is just one early and vicious manifestation of that unraveling. He is not alone. He won’t be the last.
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Populism and ‘post truth’
Populism has emerged as the latest bad word in the liberal commentary on current politics in the West. The understanding is simple. Populist politicians are supposed to appeal to the ‘people’ and stoke their jealousy against those who are economically, socially and politically successful. Another word used in liberal discourse to identify extreme right wing is ‘post truth’, designated as the word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. The implication is that popular opinion now is easily swayed by emotionally charged rhetoric and fake news having no factual basis. The claim that this is happening only now is odd.
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The continental revolution
Between the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century, the United States underwent one of the most profound economic transformations that any country has ever experienced. In 1865, the United States lagged far behind Britain in manufacturing output; by 1900, it would surpass the totals of Britain, France, and Germany combined.
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Globalization and executive compensation
Growing inequality has been one of the most salient features of the US economy over the last 40 years. A variety of explanations for this rapid growth in top incomes have been proposed, including growing firm size new technology, the market for superstars, poor governance, and changes in top tax rates.
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Corbyn: shifting the possible
While Jeremy Corbyn didn’t become Prime Minister, he did pull off the most stunning upset in recent political history. And he did this by turning out voters who, according to all received wisdom, would never vote, above all the young and poor.
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The thing about Trump’s infrastructure plan is: it doesn’t really exist
The Republican leaders of Congress killed off Trump’s much touted infrastructure plan months before he even reached the Oval Office. What we are left with is a farce.
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New Perception of Imperialism
If accumulating wealth is the basic objective of capitalism, organising production using wage labour is only one of the ways it can be achieved. What finance does is to open an alternative route to reach the same objective, that is via transaction.
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The Crisis of US Imperial Governance and the Struggle for a New World
They don’t want to tell you about how the US has interfered in every election in Russia since the Soviet Union fell, or how it has led bloody proxy wars and coups in over fifty countries in as many years.
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The need to radicalize the Bolivarian Revolution
The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela is facing its most challenging times. The right-wing opposition, backed by the United States, is engaged in a full-blown “regime change” campaign, with violent protests occurring daily for over 2 months and resulting in over 50 casualties. The chavista supporters of the government have also taken to the streets in […]
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Samidoun Statement of Solidarity with U.S. Prisoners on Hunger Strike in Folsom State Prison
“[M]en stand again, just as unified, ready to sacrifice their bodies, health, and life to achieve what has already been hard fought for and accomplished. Why must California prisoners continue to sacrifice health and life, involve lawyers and courts, in order to be treated like human beings? We will continue to remind CDCR officials they will be held accountable for this type of treatment.”
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Cornel West: American Philosopher, Activist, Professor, Jazzman ‘In the Life of the Mind’
The arts and humanities have a key role to play in the response to injustice, he said, by offering “exemplars” as much as ideas. But they often get distracted by their own petty squabbles and obsessions. His imitation of a polite, simpering, white academic, using words like “diversity” and “text,” drew especially raucous laughter.
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We won’t always have Paris
Donald Trump today sentenced Planet Earth to death. Whether he has the power actually to have that sentence carried out is open to serious question.
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Let’s Rebuild a Democratic Global Trade Union Movement
This whole project to hollow out institutions has only one aim which is the creation of a predatory state whose only reason for existence is to accumulate and plunder the country’s resources for the benefit of family members of Jacob Zuma, as well as the network of greedy, corrupt families who also benefit from crony capitalism.
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Venezuela is deep into civil war
Following the script by the experts and strategists of the CIA, specialized in destabilizing and tearing down governments, counter-revolutionary tactics in Venezuela have made a “quality jump”: what began with a warm-up on the streets has now transitioned to a non-declared (but nonetheless bloody) civil war.
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U.S.-funded White Helmets assist in public execution in rebel-held Syria for at least the second time
In a new video Syria Civil Defense members—popularly know as the “White Helmets,” the Nobel Prize-nominated group that has received at least $23 million in funding from USAID (a wing of the State Department)—are shown assisting in a public execution in a rebel-held town in Syria. It is at least the second such execution video featuring members of the Nobel Prize-nominated group, which operates exclusively within the armed Syrian opposition and works closely with al-Qaeda’s local affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, and even ISIS.
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Honest Accounts 2017: How the world profits from Africa’s wealth
Research for this report calculates the movement of financial resources into and out of Africa and some key costs imposed on Africa by the rest of the world. We find that the countries of Africa are collectively net creditors to the rest of the world, to the tune of $41.3 billion in 2015.1 Thus much more wealth is leaving the world’s most impoverished continent than is entering it.
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Interview with Oscar López Rivera: “Fighting is not a Futile Exercise”
While many of us could hardly concentrate on everyday matters as we thought obsessively about the fragile and unfortunate fate of Oscar López Rivera, the former political prisoner painted peacefully in the prison in Terre Haute Indiana. Then on January 17, at 3:30 pm a guard called him to let him know that he had […]
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‘We need direct elections now and an emergency plan for the people’
Leader of the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST), Joao Pedro Stedile, on the Brazilian political scenario, the role of the O Globo media network, the internal divisions among the putschists, and the need of building a transition government and the people’s project of Brazil.