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Monetary Foundations of Education w/ Larry Johnson
This month, we speak with Larry Johnson, associate professor in the Social Foundations of Education Program at the University of South Florida, Saint Petersburg. In his pedagogy, Johnson focuses on the complex relationship between education, culture, and society with the goal of exploring policies and practices from historical and contemporary perspectives that address structural inequality, and transforming educational institutions into sites for social justice. Johnson is notably a long-time proponent of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) and variously mobilizes MMT’s insights when training our teachers-to-be.
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Tales of Resistance: A Perilous ‘Honeymoon’ with the U.S.
In her latest column, Jessica Dos Santos discusses what the Venezuelan government should prioritize during this period of alleviated sanctions.
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How the International Monetary Fund continues to shrink the poorer Nations: The Forty-Third Newsletter (2023)
At Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we continue to monitor the IMF’s impact on developing economies, including in our new dossier, How the International Monetary Fund Is Squeezing Pakistan (October 2023).
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Central Africa Forest Initiative (CAFI): A classic case of climate funding fraud in Africa
Central Africa Forest Initiative (CAFI) was established in 2015 to protect the huge rainforests of the Congo Basin, which span six Central African countries: DR Congo, Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Gabon.
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Common sense solutions for collapse
Humanity faces a crisis of unprecedented proportions–a double-edged sword threatening both our planet and its people.
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How capitalism killed nutrition
Review of ‘Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop?’ By Chris van Tulleken.
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Sam Bankman-Fried and the moral abyss of the market
“There will probably never be anything I can do to make my lifetime impact net positive”, Sam Bankman-Fried wrote in his diary after the collapse of his cryptocurrency company FTX.
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Class Leaders and ‘Tipping Point for Advanced Capitalism’
The basic aim of ‘Tipping Point for Advanced Capitalism: Class, Class Consciousness and Activism in the “Knowledge Economy”’ is to bring class back into thinking about capitalism and alternatives.
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Karl Marx’s “degrowth communism”?
A review of ‘Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism’, Kohei Saito (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
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Degrowth – How anti-worker would it be?
One accusation still seems to lack an adequate response: Is the U.S. working class inherently anti-degrowth because it would mean a massive loss of jobs?
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How could a BRICS+ bank and settlement currency work? Economist Michael Hudson explains
Economist Michael Hudson details how BRICS could create a mutual settlement currency for payment imbalances among central banks and build an alternative to the financialized neoliberal model of the dollar/NATO bloc.
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Microplastics pose risk to ocean plankton, climate, other key Earth systems
An estimated 12 million metric tons of plastic currently enters the ocean each year.
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American society wasn’t always so car-centric. Our future doesn’t have to be, either
The surprising history of cars in the U.S. offers hope for a shift toward more climate-friendly transportation options.
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Debt-pushing as financial inclusion
Ajay Banga was anointed World Bank president for promoting financial inclusion. Thanks to its success and interest rate hikes, more poor people are drowning in debt as consumer prices rise.
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We have here, in Africa, everything necessary to become a powerful, modern, and industrialised continent: The Fortieth Newsletter (2023)
In his 1963 book, ‘Africa Must Unite’, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president, wrote, ‘We have here, in Africa, everything necessary to become a powerful, modern, industrialised continent.
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Reparations for Black Americans w/ William A. Darity
We’re joined this month by William A.( “Sandy”) Darity to discuss reparations for Black Americans. A founding theorist of stratification economics and foremost scholar of the racial wealth gap in the United Stats, Darity is perhaps best known for his committed public advocacy for acknowledging, redressing, and resolving histories of racist violence against enslaved black people and their descendents through a federal program of reparations for black Americans.
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U.S. Academic Steve Ellner: ‘Venezuela needs more checks and balances to fight corruption and abuse of power’
Orinoco Tribune interviewed U.S. academic Steve Ellner on different issues, ranging from Venezuelan domestic issues to global matters.
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Destroying forests for profits: India
THE Modi government, ever solicitous of corporate interests, has launched a plan whereby real estate developers and other corporates will be allowed to destroy large swathes of India’s forest cover for starting projects that rake in profits. It is amending the Forest Conservation Act to remove those forest patches that are not deemed as such by the government from protection under the Act.
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Shouldn’t the United Kingdom and France relinquish their permanent seats at the United Nations?: The Thirty-Ninth Newsletter (2023)
At its fifteenth summit in August 2023, the BRICS (Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa) group adopted the Johannesburg II Declaration, which, amongst other issues, raised the question of reforming the United Nations, particularly its security council. To make the UN Security Council (UNSC) ‘more democratic, representative, effective, and efficient, and to increase the representation of developing countries’, BRICS urged the expansion of the council’s membership to include countries from Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
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“Welfare for Markets: A Global History of Basic Income” – book review
“Welfare for Markets” exposes the neoliberal links of basic income, and helps to explain why it is not a useful demand for the left, argues Dominic Alexander