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Each heartbeat must be our song; the redness of blood, our banner
Too little has been made of the fact that countries like Laos and Vietnam have been able to manage the coronavirus; there are no confirmed deaths from COVID-19 in either country.
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Leaked documents show police knew far-right extremists were the real threat at protests, not “ANTIFA”
We’ve seen the way that the police responded to nonviolent civil disobedience at Standing Rock or in Ferguson versus the laissez-faire approach they’ve used in a number of these white supremacist riots. They clearly can regulate their behavior. Why they choose not to when it’s groups protesting police violence is what I think local government needs to understand.
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Cuba in the last stretch of the Pandemic
Cuba is only a few days away from ending its coronavirus quarantine. Except for Havana, all the other provinces are free of the contagion and have begun moving toward a new normality.
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How Settler Colonial States use incarceration as a tool of dehumanization during the COVID crisis
Incarceration is a manifestation and continuation of chronic and interwoven structures of oppression
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Police surveilled George Floyd protests with help from Twitter-affiliated startup Dataminr
The monitoring seems at odds with claims from both Twitter and Dataminr that neither company would engage in or facilitate domestic surveillance following a string of 2016 controversies.
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Turin grants honorary citizenship to head of Cuban medical brigade (+ Photos)
The Municipal Council of Turin granted the honorary citizenship of that city in the region of Piedmont to Dr. Julio Guerra, head of the Cuban medical brigade that helped fight COVID-19 there.
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Laos has tackled COVID-19, but it is drowning in debt to international finance
On June 11, Laos (Lao People’s Democratic Republic)—a country of 7 million in Southeast Asia—said it had temporarily prevailed over COVID-19.
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Chart of the day
Yesterday morning, the U.S. Department of Labor (pdf) reported that, during the week ending last Saturday, another 1.3 million American workers filed initial claims for unemployment compensation. That’s on top of the 48.7 million workers who were laid off during the preceding fifteen weeks.
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Mask-to-mask instruction may be more problematic than distance learning
People talk about the upcoming school year as if we have a choice between in-person classes or distance learning.
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U.S. ruling class demands deadly reopening of schools
The ruling class, having worked out its strategic response to the pandemic in February and March, has carried out an unrelenting assault on workers ever since. The working class must respond with equal determination and ruthlessness. It must fight for the socialist overturn of the capitalist system, which threatens the lives of millions of workers and youth around the world.
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The parlous state of poverty eradication
The world is at an existential crossroads involving a pandemic, a deep economic recession, devastating climate change, extreme inequality, and an uprising against racist policies. Running through all of these challenges is the longstanding neglect of extreme poverty by many governments, economists, and human rights advocates.
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As white Jesus debate rages, Islam undergoes its own racial reckoning
The worldwide push for racial justice has sparked discussion within some Muslim communities on the overly white illustrations of key figures in the Islamic tradition, particularly the twelve imams so revered in Shiaism.
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BAR Book Forum: Andrew J. Douglas’s “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Critique of the Competitive Society”
This book sets out to challenge some of the assumptions that undergird what I call the competitive society—that is, a society marked by winners and losers, a world in which Black people are routinely expected to bear the burden of loss and defeat.
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VenezolanosConBiden and MAGAzuela: Two sides of the same coin
The Biden campaign recently held an event outlining the presidential hopeful’s “vision for Venezuela.” Spoiler alert: it barely differs from President Trump’s.
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The hunger pandemic in Colombia
The unchecked growth of the COVID-19 pandemic in Latin America is tearing apart the socio-economic fabric of the countrieslocated in that continent.
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Richie Rich & friends
Being the biggest rich capitalist country, the U.S. also has the largest number of wealthy people. Quite how many will come as a bit of a surprise for those who have heard the ‘1% versus 99%’ slogan; it is not just Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos.
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USA: ‘Qualified immunity’ is how the Police state stays in power
Make no mistake about it: this is what constitutes “law and order” in the American police state.
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Don’t let the Democratic Party bury the movement
The Black movement will be asphyxiated by the ubiquitous fingers of the Democratic Party if it does not build independent nexuses of people’s power.
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The revolutionary life of Dr. Alan Berkman
I was dear friends with Dr. Alan Berkman and his physician wife and comrade Dr. Barbara Zeller. “They shared a deep moral commitment to make medical care available to all,” as Barbara Ehrenreich has written, “even if it took a revolution to achieve.”
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Instead of freeing elderly prisoners in response to Coronavirus, Cuomo created a prison nursing home way upstate
THE ADIRONDACK CORRECTIONAL Facility is tucked away in the mountainous North Country of New York State, less than a two-hour drive from the Canadian border. Three years ago, it was converted to incarcerate teens aged 16 to 17, automatically prosecuted as adults under pernicious state law. As of this May, in response to the coronavirus pandemic, all of the young people were transferred out of the facility: It will now serve as a nursing home prison.