ADDED 02/09/2019
FROM 02/05/2019 | The Conversation
BY Richard Carney
Russia’s successful interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election may inspire other countries to do the same. These other countries don’t look threatening. They look like democracies. But they’re not. They’re a special kind of autocratic regime that masquerades as a democracy. And what looks like benevolent conduct by these countries can quickly change into aggressive, […]
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ADDED 11/26/2018
FROM | BuzzFeed
BY Ryan Broderick
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — From the balcony of BuzzFeed’s São Paulo office right now, you can hear screams of “Ele Não” echoing through the city’s winding avenues. It’s the same phrase I’ve seen graffitied all over the city this month. The same one I heard chanted from restaurants and bars all afternoon. It means “not […]
see sourceADDED 11/13/2018
FROM 11/06/2018 | Truthdig
BY Jeffrey Bowers
What does United States of America stand for nowadays if political division is at an all time high? Is it still the land of the free if America has the highest rate of incarceration in the world? Are we still the home of the brave if we refuse to stand up to injustice, because it […]
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ADDED 11/12/2018
FROM 11/07/2018 | Intercepted
BY Jeremy Scahill
POLITICIANS LOVE TO tell us every election is the “most important of our lifetime.” With Donald Trump in power, it rings true for many voters. This week on Intercepted: Journalist Chris Hedges has spent the past 15 years trying to ring the alarm about the dangers of the U.S. political system and the impact of a […]
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ADDED 10/29/2018
FROM 10/29/2018 | Mint Press
BY Rob Urie
With Jair Bolsonaro’s electoral victory in Sunday’s runoff election for president of Brazil, a global resurgence of the radical right is indisputable. Mr. Bolsonaro is a particularly ugly representative of this movement, both politically repressive and culturally intolerant. The question being asked in the bourgeois press is: what psychological malady is taking hold that could […]
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ADDED 10/27/2018
FROM 10/27/2018 | Common Dreams
BY William E. Connolly
Neoliberalism is not fascism. But the fact that many famous neoliberals have been moved to support fascism to protect a regime from social democracy or socialism does give one pause. Hayek, Friedman, von Mises, among others, took such a turn under duress. They also had highly expansive views of what counted as a “socialist” threat. […]
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ADDED 10/16/2018
FROM 10/16/2018 | BrasilWire
BY Bruno De Oliveira
Fake news and its propagation via social media has created a suspension of critical thinking. We have people simply believing everything and nothing; accepting the absurd whilst disregarding factual information as fake news. In Brazil, this wave of fake news is creating a state of collective paranoia where ordinary people cannot distinguish between socio-economic and […]
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ADDED 10/10/2018
FROM 10/10/2018 | Scroll.in
BY Girish Shahane
Assassinations carried out in foreign lands can chill dissent, offsetting their costs. There are people who cannot take a win. Khabib Nurmagomedov is one. On Saturday night, Nurmagomedov, a Dagestani-Russian mixed martial artist, dismantled the defences of his Irish opponent Conor McGregor to retain his UFC lightweight belt, and improve his record to a remarkable […]
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ADDED 10/10/2018
FROM 10/10/2018 | Slate
BY Henry A. Giroux
Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation is not an isolated event, and in the current historical moment has dark meaning. Even in the darkest of times we have the right to some illumination. — Hannah Arendt The threads of a general political and ideological crisis run deep in American history, and with each tweet and policy decision Donald Trump pushes […]
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ADDED 10/07/2018
FROM 10/07/2018 | The Guardian
BY Tom Phillips
Brazilian leftists heaved a huge collective sigh of relief on Sunday night after Jair Bolsonaro – the homophobic, dictatorship-praising far-right front-runner – fell just short of a stunning first-round victory that would have made him president of one of the world’s largest and most diverse democracies. Their relief may well be short-lived. Fernando Haddad, Bolsonaro’s opponent in […]
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ADDED 09/01/2018
FROM 09/01/2018 | Salon
BY Henry Giroux
In the face of a nauseating and poisonous election cycle that ended with Donald Trump’s presidential victory, many commentators are quick to argue that Americans have fallen prey to a culture of incivility. This is the discourse of “bad manners” parading as insight, while working, regardless of intention, to hide the effects of power, politics, […]
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ADDED 08/21/2018
FROM 08/21/2018 | The Root
BY Michael Harriot
“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” -Ras Tafari Makkonen Perhaps no quote better captures the worldwide indifference to the […]
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