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A plea for Ahed Tamimi’s protection
The Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick of Che Guevara black and red portrait fame has done it again: He has painted a minimalist poster of another iconic leader of her people and of a worldwide liberation movement, this time of an oppressed child who had slapped power with her bare truth. When I read his rationale for painting the new portrait I cried. The man’s pacifism, sincerity, and especially his concern for Ahed Tamimi’s life touched me.
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The fight over free speech on campus
On university campuses around the world, “free speech” is becoming the favourite slogan of the right, sure to be raised during campus political controversies.
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Google’s stranglehold on information
Last September, Verge writer Cat Ferguson uncovered that Google had unwittingly allowed shady generators to manipulate its AdWords system.
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How the anti-democracy movement use media to command the narrative
As far back as 1835, perhaps our nation’s earliest and most astute observer, Alexis de Tocqueville, understood the power of the media. He described the press as “the chief democratic instrument of freedom.” But today our “instrument of freedom” seems to mean the freedom to enrich oneself privately, whatever it takes. How did we get to this sad state?
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The origin of the millennial label (and how mainstream media fails to point it out)
Here’s an experiment for you-ask five people if they know where the “millennial” label came from. Chances are that none of them will know. In fact, not much is known about the meaning of the label, other than it being a synonym for “young people” or a catch-all term for those who are “x-to-x” years old.
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Is equality enough?
Race/isms Book Forum is a new series aimed at bringing established and emerging voices together in conversation around recent work that critically engages our world’s racial scripts, past and present. The structure of the forum is straightforward. We invite three to four thinkers to grapple with a book, highlighting a section of it, and then provide the author(s) an opportunity to respond however they see fit.
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‘Black Panther’ is not the movie we deserve
Even in a comic-book movie, black American men are relegated to the lowest rung of political regard. So low that the sole white leading character in the movie, the CIA operative Everett Ross (Martin Freeman), gets to be a hero who helps save Wakanda.
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School shooting: a U.S. epidemic
How does the rate of school shootings in the U.S. compare with countries where is more difficult to obtain guns?
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Reds under the Bed
The British conservative media and party establishment are renewing their attempts to paint Jeremy Corbyn as a traitor. But given the failure of this approach in the past, why would they attempt it again?
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Mapping social reproduction theory
Let us slightly modify the question “who teaches the teacher?” and ask this of Marxism: If workers’ labor produces all the wealth in society, who then produces the worker? Put another way: What kinds of processes enable the worker to arrive at the doors of her place of work every day so that she can produce the wealth of society?
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North Korea is more rational than you think: An interview with Bruce Cumings
With the Olympic Winter Games right around the corner, tension on the Korean Peninsula is again the focal point of international affairs. After months of increasing provocation between North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and U.S. President Donald Trump — highlighted by missile tests and sabre-rattling on both sides — signs of a rapprochement are emerging.
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Review of ‘The Young Marx’
Scott McLemee reviews The Young Karl Marx, which, on the eve of 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth, contains themes of economic crises and inequalities that remain relevant today.
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DC school board member: ‘Feminists need rape’
The Washington, DC Public Charter School Board oversees some 120 public charter schools in the nation’s capitol, serving more than 43,000 students. And one member of that school board, John Goldman, is an MRA with clear white supremacist leanings. He has admitted to having an alter ego, “Jack Murphy,” under which he posted to websites and participated in debates.
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An apology for imperialism in a colourful package
We all know that Hollywood movies are fictional, right? Even the ones “based on actual events”? But at some level, if a fictional film references actual history and includes stunning visuals, great acting, and a powerful musical score, it can become accepted and internalized as “the truth.”
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‘You can’t watchdog government if government’s watching all your communication’
“Congress Advances Bill to Renew NSA Surveillance Program After Trump Briefly Upstages Key Vote” was the headline on a Washington Post article. The lead described the bill as reauthorizing “the government’s authority to conduct foreign surveillance on U.S. soil.”
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Utopia and populism
My view is that liberal critics of populism, standing on their heads, get it wrong. If made to stand on their feet, they’d have to admit that populism actually represents the failure of liberal democracy.
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A farewell to Omelas: remembering Ursula Le Guin
I had a friend who as a child wrote to Ursula Le Guin. He was feeling miserable, bad things had happened to him and he wanted to run away to Earthsea. He told her that he felt ashamed that he wasn’t facing up to life, felt it was a failing that he just wanted to live a fantasy.
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Mexico’s first ‘seduction school’, rape culture and femicides
On Sunday, the international press agency EFE did not have enough words to praise the not-even-that-new initiative of a Mexican “seduction school”, lamenting that this kind of workshop remains largely “taboo” in the country.
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The Post should be viewed by current editors of The Post
I was afraid that The Post would give us a Hollywood film version of the publication of the Pentagon Papers and manage never to say what was in the Pentagon Papers. I was afraid it would be turned into a pro-war movie.
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An open letter to our community on congress’s vote to extend NSA spying from EFF executive director Cindy Cohn
Today, the United States Congress struck a significant blow against the basic human right to read, write, learn, and associate free of government’s prying eyes.