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Dossier 2: Cities without water
Water is a class issue. Its distribution has never been equitable. What the residents of Cape Town will struggle with is what more than one billion residents of informal settlements across the planet deal with each day.
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Morales hits back at right-wing national representatives at the Summit of the Americas
Bolivian President Evo Morales hit back today at right-wing national representatives, including U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who attended this weekend’s Summit of the Americas in the Peruvian capital Lima.
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Peripheral Fascism—theory and practice
A short obituary for two dear comrades: Theotonio dos Santos (Carangola, 1936 – Rio de Janeiro, 2018) and Marielle Franco (Rio de Janeiro, 1979 – Rio de Janeiro 2018).
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War-bent Trump ready to go to bat for Radical Islamic terror group
On the campaign trail and during much of his time as president, Donald Trump has repeatedly railed against “radical Islamic terror,” which he once promised to eradicate “from the face of the Earth.” Less than two years into his presidency, however, Donald Trump has now threatened to attack a sovereign nation, Syria, at the behest of a radical Wahhabi terror group known as Jaysh al-Islam, or the Army of Islam, which seeks to topple Syria’s secular government and replace it with an Islamic state based on an extremist, Wahhabi interpretation of Islam.
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Few options for the United States in Syria
The Syrian government has won the war in the country. Two barriers to total victory remain. First, that there are pockets of rebels in the towns around Damascus and there is the province of Idlib which is controlled by rebels. Second, there are the tracts of land that are held by the United States (in the north-east), by the Turks (in the north), by Israel (in the south-west) and by Hezbollah (in the west).
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Growing disdain for America’s false democratic ideals
In 2017, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) downgraded the U.S. democratic system. The EIU has an annual Democracy index that provides a snapshot of global democracy by rating countries on five categories: electoral process and pluralism; civil liberties; functioning of government; political participation; and political culture. They are then classified into four types of governments: full democracy, flawed democracy, hybrid regime, and authoritarian regime.
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The United States is an oligarchy, not a democracy
In the U.S., any policy change with little support from the upper class has about a one in five chance of becoming law, while those backed by the elites triumph in about half of occasions, even when they go against majority opinion.
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U.S.-UK-France bomb first ask questions later: a timeline of events in Syria
The evidence — or lack thereof — of chemical weapons use by Syria is eerily similar to the events that led to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, which was justified using baseless humanitarian accusations that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction.
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Recast(e)ing the model minority: Behind right wing Hindu politics in the U.S.
Indian Americans’ susceptibility to conservative politics in the U.S. is itself a contradictory affair—on the one hand they have largely voted Democrat, but have publicly remained ambivalent about racial politics in the country. One key element of this ambivalence is the question of affirmative action and meritocracy.
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Areas of terror
This is the reason for the number of dead during the first days of the long-planned protests at the Israel-Gaza border. This is the reason for kids being shot in the back as they flee the Israeli Defence Force. The IDF is operating under what the human rights agency B’TSelem calls “illegal open fire regulations“.
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U.S. isn’t leaving Syria—but media lost it when possibility was raised
At a rally in Cleveland last week, President Donald Trump said that the U.S. will get out of Syria “very soon.” It is now clear that the 4,000 U.S. troops currently occupying Syria (Washington Post, 10/31/17) will in fact stay in Syria (Independent, 4/4/18), even though keeping troops in another country in defiance of that […]
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Aijaz Ahmad on Syria, U.S. and Palestine
A rational solution is possible for Syria, if the US wants to be rational. But with Kushner in the White House Palestine faces a grim future.
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Recycling crisis is capitalist business as usual
Recycling isn’t complicated. Households and businesses separate their recyclables from the rest of their rubbish and put them out for collection. This material then is supposed to be sorted and made into new products–a small but important contribution to sustainability in a world awash with waste.
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Another Latin American soft coup on tap? Western media decries Evo Morales’ candidacy
Supporters of Bolivia’s first Indigenous president, Evo Morales, wonder why his popular government can’t enjoy the same privilege of indefinite re-election afforded to many Western leaders without being called a “dictator” by media. Is it truly concern for “democracy” or is another agenda at play?
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Pelosi and 9 Dems had ‘excellent meeting’ with Netanyahu even as Israel sent ‘dozens of snipers’ to Gaza
Last Tuesday March 26, Nancy Pelosi led a delegation of ten House Democrats to Israel, where most of them met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu tweeted that night that he’d had an “excellent meeting” with the congresspeople.
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MLK: A snap shot in time
The line of preachers stretched 100 yards to the door of Columbus, Georgia’s radio station WOKS, where the pastors had each been allotted a few minutes to testify to their deep commitment to the ideals espoused by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., shot down in Memphis three days earlier. Nearly every Black minister in town was there, waiting his turn to lie. Although they would sound like an amen corner for “the Movement” on this mournful Sunday morning, the assembled clergymen had, in fact, acted as the front line of resistance to King’s gospel of nonviolent confrontation with the white powers-that-be.
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Is France heading for another May ’68?
Just fifty years ago on March 22nd we saw the beginning of the events in France which terrified the ruling class, led to one of the biggest general strikes ever, along with a wave of factory occupations, and could only be calmed by important concessions from the bosses (minimum wage raised by 35% and new workplace organising rights guaranteed for trade unions). For the first time for decades, the spectre of revolution in the West seemed real.
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Easter march for peace
What were these indefatigable protesters demanding this time, here in Berlin and at rainy meetings, marches and bicycle parades during the long Easter weekend in over a hundred cities and towns all over Germany?
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Anti-capitalist meetup: A framework for a better and progressively socialist, U.S. farm bill
Seriously folks, this is the third and final part in an introductory series on the need for a humane socialist U.S. agriculture policy. (Part 1: www.dailykos.com/…; Part 2: www.dailykos.com/….) For over a year I have been plodding along in my spare time researching, thinking, and writing U.S. agriculture-related pieces from what I will call a progressively socialistic perspective. Along the way I have developed the firm conviction that the lack of a comprehensive practical focus on agricultural issues is a major problem for the U.S. left, politically and programmatically.
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“We did not feel we belonged to the same Europe as them”
Given the context of Ernaux’s book, which traces different instances of French and world political history over the span of 66 years, one can clearly infer that the “we” of this passage refers to French people and, by extension, Western Europeans as a larger group. As a Macedonian, I am inclined to think that I am not and probably never will be a part of this “we”.