Subjects Archives: Culture

Strict weapons’ laws in the old East Germany, undoubtedly a restriction of on freedom, meant that there were virtually no shooting deaths and never a single mass shooting, in schools or anywhere else.

In a slave society, one can argue, the interest of the slaves lies in keeping the slave owner happy, for otherwise he is likely to flog and whip them mercilessly which would cause them great agony. Likewise in a caste society, one can argue, the interest of the Dalit lies in being as inconspicuous as possible, in not ‘polluting’ the upper castes through his presence, for otherwise he is likely to be beaten and lynched.

One Marxist line of inquiry into environmental problems has outshone all others in creativity and productivity: the theory of the metabolic rift.

As “chief of base” of a CIA Black Site in Thailand, Haspel oversaw the torture and waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, who still hasn’t been charged with a crime.

Welcome to Pt. 2 of the multi-part critical Review of David Willetts’ ‘A University Education’. This part of the Review focuses on Willetts’ plans for so-called ‘alternative providers’ – a euphemistic term which should be read as synonymous with for-profit colleges and universities – and his reflections on wanting to see a British higher education (HE) monopoly rise up to compete with global HE mega-corporations.

Transport has undergone enormous changes in recent decades, both in Scotland and across the world. Some have been cyclical: in Scotland’s capital, trams were built, dismantled, and then reintroduced. In other areas, we have seen consistent trends like the steady deregulation and privatization of services, which has left Edinburgh as the sole city in Scotland with a municipal bus operator.

It takes three days on the open sea to journey from the Marshall Islands capital to Enewetak Atoll. You can’t see the atoll until you’re just miles away as it’s only feet above sea level. As you get closer, the sun fades behind clouds and the islands are shrouded in mist. Beaches are fringed not by coconut palms but Australian pines, trees praised for soaking up salt-spray and airborne radionuclides.

The term “white working class” captured much of the media analysis which sought to explain Trump’s meteoric rise and subsequent victory to the highest office in the United States. The obsession with polling and voting trends based in demographics is certainly nothing new.

The liberation of women must be at the heart of the struggle for socialism, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY

Race/isms Book Forum is a new series aimed at bringing established and emerging voices together in conversation around recent work that critically engages our world’s racial scripts, past and present. The structure of the forum is straightforward. We invite three to four thinkers to grapple with a book, highlighting a section of it, and then provide the author(s) an opportunity to respond however they see fit.

How does the rate of school shootings in the U.S. compare with countries where is more difficult to obtain guns?

Let us slightly modify the question “who teaches the teacher?” and ask this of Marxism: If workers’ labor produces all the wealth in society, who then produces the worker? Put another way: What kinds of processes enable the worker to arrive at the doors of her place of work every day so that she can produce the wealth of society?

With the Olympic Winter Games right around the corner, tension on the Korean Peninsula is again the focal point of international affairs. After months of increasing provocation between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump — highlighted by missile tests and sabre-rattling on both sides — signs of a rapprochement are emerging.

The Washington, DC Public Charter School Board oversees some 120 public charter schools in the nation’s capitol, serving more than 43,000 students. And one member of that school board, John Goldman, is an MRA with clear white supremacist leanings. He has admitted to having an alter ego, “Jack Murphy,” under which he posted to websites and participated in debates.

When we talk about generations, we tend to talk as if history has always been divided up into them. But the idea of distinct eras of cohorts each defined by some unique spirit is not timeless. The notion of a generation was borne of a conception of history as a machine of progress—a claim central to Enlightenment ideology

The recent controversies about Oxford Professor Nigel Biggar’s “Ethics and Empire” project and UK Universities Minister Jo Johnson’s attack on “safe space culture” have both been defended on freedom of speech grounds. However, they are better understood as retrenching colonial thinking in universities.

The story of women’s prison growth has been obscured by overly broad discussions of the “total” prison population for too long. This report sheds more light on women in the era of mass incarceration by tracking prison population trends since 1978 for all 50 states.

The Last Jedi, the eighth episode of the legendary Star Wars series, has been out for less than 10 days but already boasts well over $650 million in revenue from the box office.

MISHA GLENNY’S new series McMafia was launched on BBC TV on New Year’s Day. It is an appropriate if depressing opener for the new year.

Just a week ago, Colombian social leaders denouncing the murder of another one showed up to the press conference with masks covering their faces in order to avoid risking to lose their own lives—such is the danger of defending human rights in Colombia.