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The Mexican earthquakes in perspective
Mexico suffered two powerful earthquakes in September 2107. The first, with magnitude 8.2 took place on September 7. With its epicenter off the Pacific coast of southern Mexico, it caused damage mainly in the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. The second took place on September 19 and had a magnitude of 7.1, with its epicenter about 75 miles (120 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City, damaged the surrounding area, including Mexico City.
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Animal liberation, human liberation
The Left must endeavor to make visible the political valence of meat, let alone other industrial uses of animals. This act of acute empathy reveals the extent of one’s political imagination.
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Third World Quarterly row: Why some western intellectuals are trying to debrutalise colonialism
Vijay Prashad explains his resignation from the editorial board of Third World Quarterly after it published an apologia for colonialism.
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Merkel clobbered while rightists threaten
A key result of the German elections is not that Angela Merkel and her double party, Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Bavarian CSU (Christian Social Union), managed to stay in the lead with the most votes, but that they got clobbered, with the biggest loss since their founding.
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Memo to Jacobin: Ecomodernism is not ecosocialism
Ecomodernism is incompatible with ecosocialism. If Jacobin recognizes that and changes course, it can make important contributions to the fight against climate change.
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Work, capital and the ‘administration of punishment’
Criminal justice and welfare policies routinely produce a distinct labour force in Britain, disposable by design. This article examines recent policy developments driving these labour forms, and explores their implications for the meaning of work.
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Why do we still have employer sanctions?
The AFL-CIO was one of the main supporters of employer sanctions back in 1986. It only took 13 years for the labor federation to learn its lesson: in February 2000 it officially called for the elimination of the policy. Another 17 years have now passed, and the case against the sanctions has only grown more solid.
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Not a duel, but a duet
Not even the stubbornest non-voters can ignore the coming Election Day in Germany, as always on a Sunday, September 24. With 34 parties, some state or local but most of them national, every stroll offers a wide choice of handsome, smiling candidate photos and bold clichés.
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A lost document from the Cold War
This article covers the first substantive Internet posting and analysis of a unique Cold War document, the “Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China.”
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The informal empire of London
The division of the world is not only by classes, but by North and South as well. And unfortunately the British left does not realise that, and the framing of being anti-neoliberal, in contrast to anti-imperialist, denies this differentiated reality.
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Bernard D’Mello on revolution in the global south
From the time of independence in 1947, India has had the resources and the potential to achieve a high level of human development—yet the great majority of the country’s people have remained desperately poor.
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Unions edge closer to existential crisis
Our nation is often flummoxed by the chaotic and deceptive behavior of the Trump administration. Yet, these distractions disguise an economic agenda. That agenda is unapologetically determined to benefit corporate financial interests against the interests of all working people.
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Herbert Marcuse remembered
We are, the 1960s radical generation, now once more marching, marching, sometimes it seems mostly with the Millennials by our side. And here comes the ghost of Herbert Marcuse, who was so much with us the first time around.
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A tale of many cities: potholes in the road to municipal reform
As a growing number of groups on the left have begun dabbling in local electoral politics—most notably via the Democratic Socialists of America (or DSA-backed candidacies)—we would do well to heed the warning of Juan Gonzalez about the “consultant class” (currently in the employ of Mayor de Blasio). The allure of corner-cutting political consultants, corporate cash, and the always pernicious influence of pay-to-play after any election day success by would-be reformers are pitfalls that left electoral efforts must avoid at all cost.
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People are radicalizing the Bolivarian Revolution
For those confused by the recent headlines on Venezuela, this is a point worth explaining. The so-called ‘peaceful’ ‘pro-democracy’ demonstrators of the opposition had made threats against those who planned to participate in the Constituent Assembly elections, leaving many people fearful to vote in their own communities, particularly those with a strong opposition presence. This fear was not unfounded.
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An interview with Timir Basu on the 50th anniversary of the Naxalbari Uprising
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the outbreak of the “Naxalite” revolutionary peasant uprising in northern India, named for the locale in which it first appeared, Naxalbari. What follows is an interview with a prominent Bengali intellectual who recalls his youthful foray into the countryside to organize poor peasants.
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150 years of Das Kapital: How relevant is Marx today?
This is a book that has been pronounced dead or obsolete many times, but it keeps bouncing back, with the latest recovery in interest and sales just after the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. So why do so many people all over the world still read (or try to read) Karl Marx’s Capital today?
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Yanis Varoufakis’s self-incriminating account of the Greek Crisis (Part 1)
Yanis Varoufakis’s entire proposal regarding debt was and is unacceptable from a left-wing point of view because it presupposes evacuating any debate as to the legality and legitimacy of the debts whose repayment is being demanded of Greece.
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A critique of David Harvey’s analysis of imperialism
John Smith argues that prominent Marxian theorist David Harvey is an imperialism-denier who uses his considerable prestige as a prominent Marxist theoretician to miseducate his readers on the nature of contemporary imperialism.
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Forgetting to remember
It is a devastating fact that James Baldwin is our contemporary; so much so, that the matter of his relevance seems either pressing or redundant depending on to whom one speaks. Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, a “cinematic séance” (The Guardian), is being taken as the completion of Baldwin’s unfinished Remember This House, […]