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Twitter spreads paid U.S. gov’t propaganda while falsely claiming it bans state media ads
Twitter says it bans ads from state-affiliated media outlets. However, U.S. government propaganda organs like Voice of America’s VOA Persian pay the social media corporation huge sums of money to spread disinformation against Iran and other foreign adversaries.
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Chart of the day
The American economy gained 1.8 million jobs last month, even as the coronavirus surged in many parts of the country and newly reintroduced restrictions caused some businesses to close for a second time.
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Robin Kelley on love, study, and struggle
Hosted by Paul Holdengräber, The Quarantine Tapes chronicles shifting paradigms in the age of social distancing. Each day, Paul calls a guest for a brief discussion about how they are experiencing the global pandemic.
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Lebanon explosion is an ecosocialist issue
In saying that the terrible explosion in Beirut is an ecosocialist issue I am not counterposing this claim to the fact that this is also an issue of corruption, of government incompetence, of health and safety and many other things.
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Do not reach for the sky just to surrender
The novel coronavirus continues its march through the world, with 18 million confirmed cases and at least 685,000 deaths. Of these, the United States of America, Brazil, and India are the worst-hit, harbouring about half of the world’s cases.
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Bolivia begins the week with an indefinite general strike and roadblocks
In the early hours of this Monday morning, the indefinite general strike and roadblocks began throughout Bolivia, called by the Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) and the organizations that constitute the Unity Pact, which demand that the Supreme Electoral Tribunal respect the election date established by law for September 6.
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Document exposes new U.S. plot to overthrow Nicaragua’s elected socialist gov’t
A disturbing new document outlines plans for a U.S. regime-change scheme against Nicaragua’s elected leftist government, overseen by USAID, to bring about a “market economy” and a purge of Sandinistas.
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A review of Andreas Malm’s Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency: War Communism in the Twenty-First Century
What can a virus tell us about climate breakdown, in its causation and in humanity’s response?
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Dossier 31: ‘The Politic of Blood’: Political Repression in South Africa
In his famous speech from the dock in April 1964, Nelson Mandela spoke of ‘revolutionary democracy’ rooted in precolonial forms of collective deliberation and decision making.
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Media’s ‘cancel culture’ debate obscures direct threats to first amendment
A short and rather vaguely worded open letter published in Harper’s Magazine(7/7/20) earlier this month caused an unlikely media storm that continues to rumble on.
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Black August and Black liberation: “study, fast, train, fight.”
The struggle for African/Black freedom in the United States began with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to this territory in 1619.
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How Trump managed to lead the World with the worst response to COVID-19 pandemic
Six months ago, on January 30, the director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Ten days before this, the Chinese government had said—to great alarm—that the coronavirus could be transmitted from human to human.
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A fractured empire, within and without
Two things seem certain at this point: (1) The Trump administration will continue to extend its heavy handed neofascist tactics in the next three months, seeking to expand its political base by these means, and (2) the White House and the Republican Party will try to engineer another set of stimulus payments/tax cuts in early September with Trump’s name all over it.
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The Black Caucus and the dictatorship of (White) capital
Black politics does not exist in the Democratic Party, because the duopoly system serves only the corporate rulers.
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Crisis and Virus: COVID-19 in context
“Now this liberal virus, which pollutes contemporary social thought and eliminates the capacity to understand the world, let alone to transform it, has profoundly penetrated the whole of the ‘historical left’ formed in the aftermath of the Second World War” (Samir Amin, 2003, 41)
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COVID-19, capitalism and climate
No one should have been surprised by COVID-19. Epidemiologists have been warning for decades about the increasing danger of novel virus pandemics that could cause major human suffering, disrupt the economy and exacerbate the growing inequalities that characterizes the modern world.
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A “brazen giveaway” GOP HEALS Act is a $30 billion bonanza for the Pentagon
The new $1 trillion GOP HEALS act includes billions for F-35 fighters, Apache Helicopters, and other welfare programs for the Pentagon.
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Chart of the day
All told, 54.1 million American workers have filed initial unemployment claims during the past nineteen weeks.
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Humanity protests against the crimes of death
On 23 July, World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced that the world now has 15 million people infected by COVID-19.
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“We Charge Genocide”—forerunner at UN of Black Lives Matter
“Once the classic method of lynching was the rope. Now it is the policeman’s bullet.”