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The billionaire ‘nepo baby’ boom
In every country and culture, capitalism depends on an ideological mirage of equal opportunity and reward for effort, to conceal, as much as possible, the reality of brutal exploitation and inequality.
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What Julian Assange taught us about empire
The truth, it turns out, won’t set you free: under capitalism it can get you locked up. That’s what Julian Assange discovered when he spoke truth to power.
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Billionaires go bunkers
The year is 2070. A global catastrophe—climate change, nuclear winter, civil war: pick your poison—recently ended civilisation and opened a new chapter in your life.
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Lenin in his own words: five key texts
Vladimir Lenin, leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, is one of history’s most well-known figures, and one of its most maligned. Mainstream culture vilifies him as a despot.
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Rich whingers dominate Australian politics
Australia’s richest people are by far the country’s biggest whingers.
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The importance of a mass movement
Mass protests change people. The act of collectively standing together pushes aside the powerlessness we experience in everyday life, builds confidence and generates a sense of strength.
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At Davos, the inmates run the asylum—and the world
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is the ruling-class Comic-Con, a fantasy fortress where the 1 percent’s 1 percent can save the world that they are sending to hell.
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Thirty years of failure on climate: How did it come to this?
It’s more than 50 years since scientists first came to understand that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from human activities could be drivers of a potentially catastrophic warming of the world’s climate.
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Everyone is Hitler, when it suits—just not Western leaders
A few signs depicting Benjamin Netanyahu as Adolf Hitler were postered in Sydney over the weekend. The police reportedly are investigating and urging people to contact Crime Stoppers if they have any “information in relation to the incident”.
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How capitalism killed nutrition
Review of ‘Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop?’ By Chris van Tulleken.
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Sam Bankman-Fried and the moral abyss of the market
“There will probably never be anything I can do to make my lifetime impact net positive”, Sam Bankman-Fried wrote in his diary after the collapse of his cryptocurrency company FTX.
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Everybody knows the reef is dying
Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek last week welcomed a UNESCO World Heritage Committee decision not to list the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger”. But what is “great news” to Plibersek is not great news for the reef.
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The roots and reality of racism in France
Liberté. Egalité. Fraternité. That was the slogan with which the French masses overthrew the hated monarchy in 1789.
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Another northern summer of climate catastrophe
Last year, an EU study estimated that more than 60,000 people across Europe died due to heat. This year is likely to be even worse.
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What is social class?
A recent Essential poll found that 79 percent of Australians believe social classes still exist in Australia. This is unsurprising, given the distribution of wealth. For example, the Australia Institute’s Inequality on Steroids report estimates that the top 10 percent of Australian income earners received 93 percent of the benefits from all economic growth in the decade from 2009 to 2019.
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They must think we’re stupid
The fox is in charge of the chook house. Dracula is guarding the blood bank. And the CEO of one of the biggest oil and gas companies in the world will preside over the big United Nations climate conference at the end of this year.
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No justice, no peace in France
“Tout le monde deteste la police!”—Everyone hates the police—was chanted at demonstrations and riots across France last week.
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Socialism and the city
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx highlighted that “constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones”.
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The magic of capitalism
Spend less, work longer or get another job, move in with your parents or get a flatmate. But whatever you do, don’t push for a pay rise to compensate for inflation.
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Trump charges: why ‘unprecedented’?
“It is hard to overstate the gravity of the criminal indictment”, the New York Times editorial board wrote on 9 June, noting Trump’s “contempt for the rule of law”.