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If you take away freedom, all four seasons and I will die
Turkey has invaded Syria. In particular, Turkey has crossed the border to destroy the largely Syrian Kurdish province of Rojava, south of the Turkey-Syria border and east of the Euphrates River. The green light for this invasion came from Washington, DC, when U.S. President Donald Trump told Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that the U.S. would withdraw its troops from the area.
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iPhone workers today are 25 times more exploited than textile workers in 19th Century England
A recent report by the International Labour Organisation shows that the total global labour force is now measured at 3.5 billion workers. This is the largest size of the global labour force in recorded history. Talk of the demise of workers is utterly premature when confronted with the weight of this data.
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My voice is the gallows for all tyrants
More than seven million Kashmiris remain suffocated by the Indian government. The curfew that went into effect on 5 August is still in place. The media is not able to get into the state and offer a report of the situation. Telephone and internet services have been shut down.
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Strikes Have Followed Me All My Life
Strikes have followed Sala all her life, as they followed Emma Mashinini. These are militants who understand that social divisions favour the wealthy, while social unity favours the poor. Those fires in the South African spazas mirror the attacks on the houses, schools, and health centres in Milagro Sala’s Jujuy province. Tears are not enough to put these fires out.
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We will see roots reaching out for each other
Last week, Agence France-Presse got its hands on a draft UN report called Special Report on the Ocean and Cyrosphere in a Changing Climate. This 900-page document is study of the oceans for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN body which won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2007.
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Hungering for the language of class war
Dark skies persist over coastal Brazil, where the country’s major population centres are to be found. This year, there have been 40,341 fires in the Amazon, the highest since 2010.
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History often proceeds by jumps and zig-zags
The main conflict here – since the 1940s – has been between India and Pakistan. Disagreements are deeply rooted in the political culture of each country. The rise of the far right in India has only inflamed the conflict further.
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There must be bones under the paved street
On 6 August 1945, the United States military dropped a bomb that contained 64kg of uranium-235 over the city of Hiroshima (Japan). The bomb took just over 44 seconds to fall from 9,400 metres and detonated 580 metres above the Shima Surgical Clinic. Over 80,000 people died instantly. This was the first use of the nuclear bomb.
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Homage to OSPAAAL, the organisation of solidarity for the peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America
We live world where the aspirations of the workers and peasants are arrogantly dismissed. It is a world where the violence of a B-52 bomber is seen as reasonable, whereas the cries for an end to hunger are seen as utopian.
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As the ocean waters rise, so do the islands of garbage
Trump has made nasty remarks about how Asian countries are the great polluters of the planet. Trump, in his shudderingly ignorant way, said that the United States of America would use its power to prevent Asians from destroying the planet.
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Revolutions are not the train ride, but the human race grabbing for the emergency brake
Impossible to deny the reality of poverty in our world. Studies of the data on income and wealth routinely show that billions of people on the planet live with minimal access to resources. These studies demonstrate that poverty cannot be measured merely by the financial resources that are not available; they demonstrate how billions of people have no access to electricity, safe drinking water, education, or health care.
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For the reasons that follow, that Country is currently not likely to be the United States
The largest delegation from outside Russia at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in early June came from China.
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Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature
On the one hand, people who spend most of their time working develop an understanding of the ‘practical transformation of the world’. This framework is implicit in the workers’ activity, since the worker–given the theft of their time–is often prevented from having a ‘clear theoretical consciousness of this practical activity’.
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Be careful of the crooked smile of powerful people
“For humanity, comrades,” writes Frantz Fanon at the close of his monumental The Wretched of the Earth, “we must turn over a new leaf, we must work out new concepts, and try to set afoot a new man’. Terrible inequalities in our world keep humanity divided.
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The world divided by a line is a dead body cut in two
A war against Iran–as Hamid says–will be catastrophic, not only for Iran but for Eurasia. It would divide the world into two, vultures and hyenas feasting on both halves.
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The dogs of war are unchained once more
This week’s newsletter features an open letter to the President of Indonesia, written by Khamid Istakhori, General Secretary of Federasi SERBUK–a large trade union federation in Indonesia. He asks President Jokowi to use Indonesia’s presidency of the UNSC to denounce violations of international law against Venezuela.
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We are the shadow-ghosts, creeping back as the camp fires burn low
Professor Sandra Díaz, who teaches in Argentina’s National University of Cordoba and is the co-chair of the IPBES report, said that although bio-diversity and eco-diversity are ‘declining fast’, ‘we still have the means to ensure a sustainable future for people and the planet’.
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We have stolen his land. Now we must steal his limb
When the late South African artist Tito Zungu wanted to depict the world of the migrant labourer, he settled on the envelope. It was by infrequent letters that the migrant would be able to be in touch with family – letters dictated to professional letter writers at one end, which would be read out by professional letter readers at the other.
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We thought it was merely a stone, but it carried away our wealth
n Venezuela, the political leadership of the oligarchy beg for the men in green to set aside the Constitution, as Juan Guiadó and the Venezuelan right-wing opposition attempted a military coup in Venezuela this Tuesday.
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If war is an industry, how can there be peace in a capitalist World?
On 26 April 1937, twelve bombers of the German Condor Legion and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria flew low over the Basque country of Spain in the midst of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). They tore down over the small town of Guernica, where they let loose their fiery arsenal. Almost two thousand people died in this defenceless town.