ADDED 04/12/2018
FROM 04/12/2018 | Brasilwire
BY Saad Filho
“It is scandalous to have the US government guiding policy and the judicial prosecution of Lula. It is scandalous to have the judicial process turned into a spectacle for TV. It is scandalous to invite the military back into politics.” Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was the most influential trade union leader in Brazil in […]
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ADDED 04/06/2018
FROM 04/05/2018 | Salon
BY Chauncey Devega
Scholar Andrew Whitehead: Right-wing evangelicals think Trump can make “their vision of a Christian nation” real y the standards of any of the world’s major religions Donald Trump is an ungodly person, an enthusiastic and unrepentant sinner who revels in his misdeeds. Trump is a serial liar and apparent narcissist. He is a greedy, crude […]
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ADDED 04/04/2018
FROM 04/01/2018 | Monthly Review
BY Gerald Horne
The years between 1603 and 1714 were perhaps the most decisive in English history. At the onset of the seventeenth century, the sceptered isle was a second-class power, but the Great Britain that emerged by the beginning of the eighteenth century was, in many ways, the planet’s reigning superpower.1 It then passed the baton to its […]
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ADDED 04/03/2018
FROM 03/15/2018 | Al Jazeera
BY Jonathan Cook
Nazareth, Israel – After seven years of delays, the Israeli governing parties have agreed the final terms of controversial new legislation that would define Israel exclusively as “the nation-state of the Jewish people”. The bill is now expected to be fast-tracked through the Israeli parliament and on to the statute books in the coming weeks. Approval by […]
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ADDED 03/29/2018
FROM 03/28/2018 | Letters and Politics - KPFA
BY
Today we are in conversation with professor Christian Fuchs to examine the right-wing authoritarian use of social media and the capitalist models that allow growing such issues as the one concerning Cambridge Analitica. Christian Fuchs is a professor of social media at the University of Westminster, Director of the Westminster Institute for Advanced Studies & Communication and Media Research Institute, United Kingdom. […]
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ADDED 03/28/2018
FROM 03/28/2018 | Slate
BY Slate
Anand Giridharadas on why many rich people do harm—even when they think they’re doing good. Yascha Mounk discusses the limits of philanthropy, how the hopey-changey narrative of the affluent cloaks the power they exercise, and how they can do better with author of the forthcoming book Winners Take All and former New York Times and current NBC […]
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ADDED 03/22/2018
FROM 03/20/2018 | AlterNet
BY Mehreen Kasana
The practice of governments and security firms conducting wide-scale exploitation of major disasters, natural and otherwise, is nothing new. Last week, the Intercept reported on TigerSwan, a mercenary security firm that follows a similar disaster-capitalist model and has attacked the No Dakota Access Pipeline (NoDAPL) movement since 2016, at least. But that’s not all: TigerSwan has also been preying […]
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ADDED 03/16/2018
FROM 03/14/2018 | Medium
BY Robert Greenfield IV
Maduro’s new Petro token is consolidating power and crowdfunding oppression. “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” ― Simone Weil Last year, token sales raised approximately $5.6 billion. The crypto-method of crowdfunding has opened the floodgates to decentralized funding, which […]
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ADDED 03/08/2018
FROM | The Economist
BY Bagehot
British institutions may not withstand the authoritarian-populist wave. IN HIS dystopian novel of 1935, “It Can’t Happen Here”, Sinclair Lewis described the rise of an American Caesar, Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip. Buzz easily defeats Franklin Roosevelt for the presidency by promising to make America great again. He then sets about destroying the country’s system of checks […]
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ADDED 03/05/2018
FROM | NPR
BY Shankar Vedantam
Several years ago, sociologist Brooke Harrington decided to explore the secret lives of billionaires. As she told us in this favorite episode from 2016, what she found shocked her.
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ADDED 03/05/2018
FROM 03/02/2018 | Other 98%
BY Alexander Zaitchik
A sweeping study of drug R&D funding shows the public pays for the crucial foundations of medical breakthroughs. So why not let the public have access to them? Something odd happened when the Trump administration submitted the original version of its latest pro-corporate budget: Big Pharma didn’t like it. The problem wasn’t a tax hike […]
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ADDED 01/19/2018
FROM |
BY
Author Jeff Halper says the usual explanations of Israel’s behavior didn’t make sense to him. In June, Israelis and Palestinians marked the 48th anniversary of the Six Day War, and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip that began in its aftermath. President Obama has admitted that he doesn’t expect to see an end to […]
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