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Take a knee: The revenge of Colin Kaepernick
After Trump’s deranged demand that ownership purge NFL athletes who fail a loyalty test, it felt a little miraculous when, by a quirk of a game being played in London, Sunday morning dawned on the vision of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Baltimore Ravens arm in arm during the National Anthem. Standing with them was Shahid Khan, the league’s first non-white owner. I’d prefer no owners at all, but for now, it was a vision worth kneeling for.
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No, Antifa is not the moral equivalent of neo-Nazis
Comparisons between citizens fighting against fascism and tiki-torch wielding anti-Semites are absurd – and dangerous.
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Understanding the native roots of the constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador
Good Living is a philosophy promoted by Andean governments of South America, pioneered by Evo Morales (Bolivia) and Rafael Correa (Ecuador). It goes back to the roots of ancestral cultures of the region and posits a model for human life in harmony with nature.
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Venezuela’s Citgo provides free gas to Harvey rescue teams
Venezuela has provided free gas to rescues workers, firefighters and police in their efforts to help victims in areas affected by Harvey, the Foreign Ministry said Saturday.
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Charlottesville is America: the myth of the white supremacist tidal wave
However, white supremacy is not a tidal wave. And it isn’t a lurking storm that seeks to wreak havoc on the shores of the US either. That happened centuries ago, when English colonizers laid their claim to the North American mainland circa the mid to late 17th Century.
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Linguistic data analysis of 3 billion Reddit comments shows the alt-right is getting stronger
We’re witnessing the radicalization of young white men through the medium of frog memes. In order to see it, all you need to do is look at the words coming out of their mouths. The alt-right isn’t yet united, but it soon will be.
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Naomi Klein and Jeremy Corbyn discuss how to get the world we want
Naomi Klein interviews Jeremy Corbyn on his ideas of progression in Britain, the disgusting actions and speeches by President Donald Trump, and the triumph of the campaign.
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‘13th’ and the culture of surplus punishment
In one amendment, we have taken the land of the free to the land where 1 of 4 people are shackled and held as a slave.
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Are you ready to consider that capitalism is the real problem?
WIth 8 men holding the same wealth as 50% of the world, you have to wonder if there is something systamatically wrong with the way the world is. Capitalism is no longer ideal in the world we live in today. People are starting to realize this in the forms of inequality of wealth, food, resources. Now is the time to change that, and it can be done.
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Sweezy at sixty
I did not know that Albert Einstein was a socialist. Maybe I had known once, or more likely, never cared. But in 1949, when the great physicist and Nobel laureate declared his beliefs, in the innocuously titled “Why Socialism?,” a lot of people would have cared. Indeed, by 1953, Joseph McCarthy was after him, and people were sending hate mail to the Institute for Advanced Study asking that Einstein, a founding member of the research center, be sent packing.
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Empire Files: Abby Martin meets the Venezuelan opposition
Abby Martin goes on the deadly front lines of the anti government protests in Venezuela and follows the evolution of a typical guarimba—or opposition barricade. She explains what the targets from the opposition reveal about the nature of the movement and breaks down the reality of the death toll that has rocked the nation since the unrest began, and how a lynch mob campaign came after her and the Empire Files team for reporting these facts.
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A British PR firm spread “white monopoly capital” to distract South Africans from mounting corruption
It takes a certain level of cynicism to race bait South Africans to protect profits. It’s downright underhanded to hire a public relations firm to do it professionally.
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Wonder Woman is a hero only the military-industrial complex could create
For a while I have been pondering whether to write a review of the newly released “Wonder Woman,” to peel back the layer of comic book fun to reveal below the film’s disturbing and not-so-covert political and militaristic messages.
There is usually a noisy crowd who deride any such review with shouts of “Lighten up! It’s only a movie!”–as though popular culture is neither popular nor culture, the soundtrack to our lives that slowly shapes our assumptions and our values, and does so at a level we rarely examine critically.
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Toilet tales
Kakkoos (Latrine) is a Tamil documentary that is a powerful indictment of society’s apathy towards the thousands who are tasked with cleaning public toilets and sewers. The filmmaker Divya Bharathi talks about why she made a documentary and what is the task at hand, post its tremendous success.
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Venezuela: ‘our revolutionary democratic experience is at stake’
Revolutionary activist and sociologist Reinaldo Iturriza has spent many years working with popular movements in Venezuela and writing on the rise of Chavismo as a political movement of the poor. He also served as Minister for the Communes and Social Movements, and then Minister for Culture in President Nicolas Maduro’s cabinet between 2013 and 2016.
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Secular Stagnation
The fundamental changes I would advocate are those that would: dramatically boost worker power; secure a progressive and growing funding base for a needed expansion of public housing and infrastructure and public spending on health care, education, and transportation; and end the production and use of fossil fuels and significantly reduce greenhouse emissions.
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New Florida law lets any resident challenge what’s taught in science classes
Any resident in Florida can now challenge what kids learn in public schools, thanks to a new law that science education advocates worry will make it harder to teach evolution and climate change.
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Phil Collins: why I took a Soviet statue of Engels across Europe to Manchester
Friedrich Engels spent two decades in Manchester. The horrific conditions he saw in the cradle of industrialism forged his great works. But the city has never commemorated him – until now.
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US Cuba policy has been hijacked by Cuban-Americans
US policy toward Cuba (Trump reverses Obama’s Cuba deal, limiting travel and trade, 17 June) has been hijacked by a clique of Cuban-American politicians, who have sold their support in Congress to President Donald Trump. Above all, these individuals – and Trump – have demonstrated the corrupt and clientelist nature of the US political system. Can such a system serve as a symbol of “freedom” to anyone in the world?
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Izzy out loud
This year, Ramadan—the ninth month of the Islamic year, in which observant Muslims fast to commemorate the revelation of the Quran—happens to coincide with most of Gay Pride month. Quiet as it’s kept, there are uncounted numbers of queer Muslims in the gay community. One of them is Izzadine Mustafa.