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Why Brazil opposes Venezuela’s BRICS membership
The 16th Summit of the BRICS organization is taking place this week in the Russian city of Kazan. President Nicolás Maduro was invited by the Russian president himself, Vladimir Putin, at the beginning of August, and is attending with a Venezuelan delegation.
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The dialectics of wealth and poverty
THIS year’s Nobel Prize in economics (the Riksbank Prize to be more precise) has been awarded to three U.S.-based economists for their research into what promotes or hinders the growth of wealth among nations; and they assign a crucial role to institutions, arguing that western institutions like electoral democracy are conducive to growth.
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Cuba requests entry into the BRICS
On Monday, the Director of General Affairs of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Carlos Pereira, announced that his country had requested to join BRICS+.
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FTC orders Mastercard to answer questions about its data collection & monetization practices
Credit card data is extremely valuable for companies aiming to predict how people will spend money in the future. Knowing how much people spend, where and on what day says a lot about consumers’ financial situations.
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U.S. gives Israel $8.7 billion in military aid for operations in Gaza and Lebanon
The new aid comes as the U.S. claims it’s pushing for a ceasefire in Lebanon.
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People have a right to housing because they have a right to live
Vice President Kamala Harris promises to build three million affordable houses if elected president.
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They’re trying to pass laws to make dark money even darker
CounterSpin interview with Steve Macek on dark money.
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Winds of change in India-China relations
There is an expectation that Prime Minister Narendra Modi would prioritise a historic turnaround in India’s relations with China as a legacy of his 15 years in power. Things are indeed moving in such a direction.
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Cuba tells the United States there is only one Cuba
Far from being a sign of the U.S. government softening its economic and financial siege on Cuba and contributing to help Cuba’s private sector, this new policy attempts to destroy the core of the ideological makeup of Cuban socialism.
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Government debt is symptom, not cause
Developing country governments are being blamed for irresponsibly borrowing too much. The resulting debt stress has blocked investments and growth in this unequal and unfair world economic order.
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Death of petrodollar is a Biden legacy
The Deep State should have been alert five years ago when Candidate Joe Biden announced that he, if elected as president, was determined to make the Saudi rulers “pay the price, and make them in fact the pariah that they are.”
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61% in U.S. are against sending aid to Israel
The movement for Palestine in the U.S. has mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to oppose the U.S. policy of unshakable support for Israel. Last Saturday, 100,000 surrounded the White House as part of the “people’s red line” against genocide.
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China springs a BRI surprise on U.S.
The report of the death of China’s Belt and Road Initiative [BRI] was an exaggeration, after all.
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Ukraine war funding and failed Russian sanctions
Russia is extremely unlikely to fall a third time for a Biden/NATO request to ‘freeze’ military operations and negotiate again.
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Fetishising the growth rate of GDP
JOHN Stuart Mill was among the foremost liberal thinkers of modern times who wrote extensively on economics and philosophy.
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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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Central bank independence as class war strategy
Insulated from popular discontent, independent central banks have free reign to undermine workers’ rights and further the neoliberal agenda, argues John Clarke.
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U.S. workers forced to bail out Intel, a top 100 company
President Biden announced the grant, part of the massive $280 billion CHIPS Act, on March 20 in Arizona.
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Samir Amin’s last two battles
Shortly before his death, in a series of writings, Samir Amin unfolded the two issues that mainly concerned him. The first was China’s refusal to succumb to financial globalization, that is, to the totalitarian power of global financial capital; the second was the need to build a “Fifth International.”
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Inequalities and concentration of wealth in USA have wide implications
A study by the Urban Institute (UI) in 2018, before the pandemic struck, found that nearly 40 per cent of non-elderly adults and their families struggled to afford at least one basic need for health care, housing, utilities or food in 2017.