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Elon Musk is acting like a neo-Conquistador for South America’s lithium
Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, wants to build an electric car factory in Brazil. He was supposed to meet Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, in Miami in early March, but he was too busy; instead, Musk will go to Brazil sometime this year.
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Re-enchanting the world: Silvia Federici on feminism and the politics of the commons
In her recent volume Re-enchanting the World: Feminism and the Politics of the Commons (PM Press, 2019), Silvia Federici fruitfully brings together feminist reflections with discussions of the commons as a possible way of overcoming capitalism.
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“Absolute freedom of critique and discussion lies at the heart of the interests of the workers’ movement, and it must be pursued at all costs.”
On Rosa Luxemburg’s birthday, we present an extract from her 1906 essay “Critique in the Workers’ Movement,” available in English for the first time.
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Johnstone brings her moral compass to our Dantesque world
It is one of the great personal accounts of the anguished decline of our uncivilization, both a riveting eye-witness account of many of the horrors and perfidies, and a primer for students of history and all those struggling to not only dismantle the beast, but to prepare us for what follows it.
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Looking at change: U.S. and Cuba, blockade and revolution
The U.S. blockade of Cuba is like the sun; neither will disappear soon. But different: the U.S. politicians and people are aware of the sun, but may have forgotten about the Cuba blockade. It’s persisted for almost 60 years, basically unchanged. The following is about change.
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Lebanon state prosecutor blocks order to freeze assets of 20 banks
Lebanon’s state prosecutor suspended an order on Thursday to freeze the assets of 20 local banks, warning it would plunge the country and its financial sector into chaos, according to a copy of the decision seen by Reuters.
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Fear pervades Black politics, and makes us agents of our own oppression
Black youth see the truth, and will act on it, we are certain.
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From fossil capitalism to energy democracy?
As the 21st Century’s second decade opens, the increasingly severe symptoms of climate change comprise a pivot in the struggle for hegemony, globally and within national formations. With the highest per capital carbon emissions among the G20 states, Canada is a climate laggard and, in some respects, a first-world petro-state (Nikiforuk 2010), organized as a regime of obstruction (the title of an edited collection to be published this May, Carroll 2020d).
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We who were nothing and have become everything shall construct a new and better world
On 8 March 1917 (23 February by the old Julian calendar), a hundred women in the textile factories in Petrograd decided to go on strike; they went amongst the other factories and called their fellow workers onto the streets. Before long, around 200,000 workers–led by the women–marched through the streets.
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Mariátegui: A South American revolutionary
Hardly anyone in Australia has heard of José Carlos Mariátegui. Yet in South America he holds an important place in revolutionary history.
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Lebanon is a severe case of subordinate financialization that must avoid the IMF
To me, the Lebanese crisis looks like, in the first instance, as a foreign exchange and international transactions crisis, a classic developing country crisis in the era of financialisation. As such it is closely connected to the country’s policy on the exchange rate. The fixed peg policy chosen by the Lebanese ruling class and operated by the central bank and the government for a long time, has proven destructive. The country’s economy is under great pressure because the strong pound has damaged Lebanese competitiveness on an international scale and facilitated the growth of domestic credit.
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MIT researchers confirm what we knew all along: Evo won and OAS lied
The report released by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology raises questions about why the Organization of American States lied and who benefited.
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Canadian media lies about Venezuela
Canada’s public media the CBC long-ago entered the ranks of yellow journalism when it comes to its reporting on Venezuela. However, two recent reports, in particular, one on CBC radio’s “The Current” and the other a CBC News article by reporter Evan Dyer, weigh heavy on the sensationalism and light on facts. Filled with unsubstantiated claims, right-wing pundits parading as “pro-democracy” advocates and unchallenged declarations by the government of Canada officials, once again, the CBC firmly establishes their role as the mouthpiece of the government Canada.
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Obamacare with a public option: fool me twice shame on me
There is an old saying “Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.” That saying is relevant for the current healthcare debate in which former Vice-President Biden and elite Democrats are touting a reheated version of Obamacare with a public option. It is a case of trying to fool the American public twice.
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Dossier no. 26: Frantz Fanon: The brightness of metal
Frantz Fanon was born on the Caribbean island of Martinique on 25 July 1925. He died in the United States, from leukaemia, on 6 December 1961. He was thirty-six years old.
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No, the coronavirus is not responsible for the fall of stock prices
We are witnessing a big crisis in the stock markets of the Wall Street, Europe, Japan and Shanghai, and many blame the coronavirus for it. In the last week of February 2020, the worst week since October 2008, the Dow Jones fell 12.4%, the S&P 500 fell 11.5% and the Nasdaq Composite fell 10.5%.
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The prospect of peace in Afghanistan is real—and Pakistan is the key player
The U.S.-Taliban peace agreement signed in Doha on February 29 must be put in proper perspective. Indeed, there can’t be two opinions that the curtain is coming down on what U.S. President Donald Trump called the “endless war” in which America squandered away over a trillion dollars and lost thousands of lives with no victory in sight. Equally, without a doubt, this is the finest hour of Pakistan’s statecraft since the country’s creation in 1947.
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Labor and the social crisis at France Telecom
The French courts recently found the telecommunications firm Orange/France Telecom and its top managers guilty of “moral harassment” connected to a wave of worker suicides a decade ago. The former management team, including the former CEO, face jail time and fines, while the company was ordered to pay 3 million euros in damages to the victims.
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A little help from their friends: How Vietnam withstood largest bombing campaign in human history
Between 1965 the 1975, the United States Air Force dropped over three times more bombs on the Southeast Asian nations of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia than the total tonnage dropped by the Allies during World War II.
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Remembering the heroism of activist Berta Cáceres four years after her assassination: An interview with her daughter
On July 15, 2013, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), led by Berta Cáceres Flores, went to protest the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the Gualcarque River. This river, in western Honduras, is considered to be sacred by the indigenous Lenca community. No one from the company that wanted to build the dam had talked to the Lenca.