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Some are in super-yachts and others are clinging to drifting debris
COVID-19 has exposed the lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all, the fiction that unpaid care work isn’t work, the delusion that we live in a post-racist world. We are all floating on the same sea, but some are in super-yachts and others clinging to drifting debris.
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As Trump threatens secret police deployment nationwide, Democrats debate expanding surveillance powers and new money for DHS
The rogue deployment of secret federal police forces in Portland, Oregon, has added a new complication to negotiations over reauthorizing the Trump administration’s vast surveillance powers and appropriating new money for the Department of Homeland Security.
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Divergent recoveries—pandemic edition
The existing alphabet soup of possible recoveries—V, U, W, and so on (which I discussed back in April)—is clearly inadequate to describe what has been taking place in the United States in recent months.
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Defunding police and challenging militarism, a necessary response to their “battle space”
The excessive use of force and killings of unarmed Black Americans by police has fueled a popular movement for slashing police budgets, reimagining policing, and directing freed funds to community-based programs that provide medical and mental health care, housing, and employment support to those in need. This is a long overdue development.
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Suspending evictions is about saving landlords from themselves
Millions of U.S. households are already facing desperate crises.
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Congress is a month away from cutting the economy’s fiscal life support
The most important economic problem the United States is facing is the failure to contain Coronavirus and the unethical decisions politicians have been making to reopen without the administrative capacity to limit the virus’s spread.
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Freedom Rider: The police defunding con game
Cutting police budgets without establishing public control over their behavior doesn’t solve the problem, and invites politicians to shuffle budget numbers around like a three-card monte swindle.
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Chart of the day
Yesterday morning, the U.S. Department of Labor reported that, during the week ending last Saturday, another 1.4 million American workers filed initial claims for unemployment compensation.
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Venezuela denounces ‘absurd decision’ of UK to retain its gold reserves
A British high court ruled on July 2 that because the UK recognizes opposition leader Juan Guaidó as president, it does not have to give the government of Nicolás Maduro access to the reserves.
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Green structural adjustment in the World Bank’s resilient cities
Cities across the world are facing a double-barreled existential problem: how to adapt to climate change and how to pay for it.
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Meng, Huawei and Canadian law: Soap, rinse and dry-laundered
One of the graver risks for big-time criminals is that investigators will be able to identify them and their deeds by ‘following the money’. The criminals have to hide the proceeds of their crimes. This is done by depositing their monies into legitimate finance houses and businesses.
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A stock market boom amidst a real economy crisis
Altogether, as philosopher Cornel West put it, the U.S. is showing every sign of being a “failed social experiment”. And yet there is a veritable boom in the U.S. stock market. The stock market index Nasdaq has increased by more than 40 per cent since March 23 and is now “within striking distance of all time highs” as one commentator put it.
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Corporate backers of the Blue: How corporations bankroll U.S. police foundations
Companies that say they stand with protesters have been funding police foundations for years.
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UN Chief calls for reparations to amend slavery’s legacy
The U.N.’s Human Rights Chief Michelle Bachelet urged countries to confront legacy of slavery and colonialism.
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Ten-Point agenda for the Global South after COVID-19
In 1974, the United Nations General Assembly passed a New International Economic Order (NIEO), which was driven by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
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If we’re going to defund militarized police departments, why not add the Pentagon?
The U.S. military’s budget, like so many police department budgets, is bloated, and diverts our tax dollars into forces of domination and violence. Now is the time to question our spending priorities at the local and federal level.
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A consumer economy?
Richard Heinberg is a very important scholar and an apparently lovely human being. His books are always penetrating, and both his contribution to and his review of Michael Moore’s corporate-green-censored movie, Planet of the Humans, demonstrate his continuing efforts to speak crucially unheard truths.
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‘The U.S. vs China: Asia’s New Cold War?’ by Jude Woodward reviewed by Sean Ledwith
The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has slammed into the global system with almost the same impact we might expect from an asteroid strike. All aspects of economic, cultural and political activity on the planet have been devastated and disrupted in ways that seemed unimaginable just a few months ago.
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Corporate university—pandemic edition
Will colleges and universities reopen in the fall? That’s the question on the minds of many these day—administrators, faculty, staff, students, and their families, not to mention the communities in which they live.
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Huawei ban drags China, U.S. into tech cold war
Industries prepare for decoupling as worst scenario, accelerating homegrown technologies as Washington hawks destroy global supply chain.