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Ecuador, Assange and the empire: anatomy of a liberal sellout
Under Ecuador’s new government, the gagging of Assange has long been a matter of when, not if. It’s only the latest sign of a once-defiant nation’s newfound subservience to Washington and Europe.
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Bourgeois fear of revolution means disowning the Civil War
Sixteen months into the Civil War Karl Marx—as if anticipating apologists like Brooks 160 years later—criticized Lincoln for “trying to conduct it along constitutional” lines. It pleased him to no end, then, when Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation more than a month later.
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50 years after 1968: students strikers attacked again
Not an April Fool’s joke. Here are the facts: Four days ago (March 29) the ultra-conservative Dean of the Montpellier University Law School was summoned to police headquarters, interrogated, hauled into court, and held over in jail for arraignment by the Chief Prosecutor–all on the complaint of nine student strikers, who claim to have been brutally assaulted with Dean Philippe Pétel’s active complicity while ‘occupying’ a school auditorium.
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What’s a non-racist way to appeal to working-class whites? NYT‘s Edsall can’t think of any
The 2016 presidential exit polls “substantially underestimated the number of Democratic white working-class voters…and overestimated the white college-educated Democratic electorate,” New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall (3/29/18) writes.
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Theresa May is playing a reckless game of nuclear roulette
BACK in May 2017, just prior to the British general election, I wrote a piece arguing that a victory for Theresa May would see Britain dragged further towards war with Russia.
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Purple bullying, ten years later: SEIU trustees trample membership rights
At the Labor Notes conference in Chicago this coming weekend, 2,500 rank-and-file activists will attend the largest gathering ever hosted by the now Brooklyn-based labor education project. This will be the nineteenth Labor Notes conference, which started in 1981.
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Kim Jong-un restates his commitment to denuclearization. But will U.S. make way?
With the acceptance of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s invitation, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited China from the 25th of this month to the 28th, for the first time since assuming office in 2011. Timed just before Kim’s meeting with the South Korean President Moon Jae-in the next month, followed by a summit with U.S President Donald Trump-where the prospects of denuclearization is expected to be discussed-this meeting with Xi Jinping, in which Kim has reaffirmed his commitment to denuclearization, has been seen my observers as a crucial diplomatic development.
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Teachers strikes fever spreads
It started with a few hundred West Virginia teachers and school employees pulling one-day walkouts. It became an unqualified victory in that state, which educators elsewhere were quick to emulate.
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Precarious work and contemporary capitalism
Unions have no choice but to put major resources into confronting the reality of precarious work and organising around whatever can be won in the workplace. Otherwise they will simply wither.
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Jeremy Corbyn has a long and honorable record of opposing fascism, racism and anti-semitism
The Labour leader played an active part in organising against and resisting the National Front in the late ’70s.
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How the United States ‘hacked’ Russia’s elections in the 1990s
In a recent interview that went viral, Russian President Vladimir Putin repudiated NBC journalist Megyn Kelly, when she pressed him on the so-called “Russiagate” scandal.
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The danger of being wrong about animal rights
Dogs and suitcases are personal property under the law. For the most part, that enables humans to use, neglect, and abuse them indiscriminately. Dogs and other nonhumans have been property at least since the invention of money as suggested by the common etymologies of “chattel,” “cattle,” and “capital.”
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University strikes: where do we go from here?
On February 22nd the University and College Union (UCU) called for the beginning of a nation wide strike in response to Universities UK’s (UUK) attempt to shift of the Universities Superannuation Scheme from a defined benefit pension to a defined contribution pension.
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Working Document 1: In the ruins of the present
Raoul Peck, the Haitian lmmaker, opens his film—Der Junge Karl Marx (2017)—in the forests of Prussia. Peasants gather fallen wood. They look cold and hungry.… Some of the peasants die. Even fallen wood is not allowed to them.
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Surveillance capitalism and the state: Facebook devastated on multiple fronts as data theft crisis grows
Material collected by Cambridge Analytica via Facebook quizzes—which included detailed psychological profiles of unsuspecting users for the purpose of “behavioral microtargeting”—was used by the campaigns of Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and right-wing Super PACs tied to billionaire Robert Mercer.
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Can the Monroe Doctrine triumph in the 21st century?
Although many of us would like to answer this question with a resounding “No!” and insist that our region is well prepared to defend itself against the 1823 pretensions of President James Monroe, with his “America for Americans” -which must be understood as “America for the United States”- it would be a serious mistake to underestimate the risks.
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Gender and capital 150 years later
We are witnessing an era of conservative backlash on gender rights. Nearly across the board, women make less than men, make up a majority of those in poverty (70% of those in extreme poverty), and face the real prospect of becoming a victim of sexual violence (1-3 internationally).
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Buyback this!
I have been arguing, since 2016, that one of the likely outcomes of the kind of corporate tax cuts Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans have supported—and, as we saw, eventually rammed through—would be an increase in inequality.
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The March 2018 Italian elections: suicide of the left, resurgence of fascism, and chaos
The March 2018 Italian elections open a chaotic period the outcome of which remains uncertain. Only a few years ago, the country was among the most “Euro-phile.” Now, the population is “Euro-skeptic” at level of 50% or more.
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Half a year on from Hurricane Maria, many Puerto Ricans lack running water and electricity
PUERTO RICANS marked six months today since the formation of Hurricane Maria, which devastated the island, causing about $100 billion (£72bn) in damage.