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Anti-Boycott Bills Are Part of Wider Crackdown on Protest
Written by Chip Gibbons, Policy and Legislative Counsel at Bill of Rights Defense Committee/Defending Dissent Foundation A number of commentators have noted two different trends. First, across the nation Republican lawmakers are pushing for bills criminalizing protests. Second, a number of state legislatures have passed or considered, often at the impetus of Democratic lawmakers, bills aimed […]
Anti-Boycott Bills Are Part of Wider Crackdown on Protest
Written by Chip Gibbons, Policy and Legislative Counsel at Bill of Rights Defense Committee/Defending Dissent Foundation A number of commentators have noted two different trends. First, across the nation Republican lawmakers are pushing for bills criminalizing protests. Second, a number of state legislatures have passed or considered, often at the impetus of Democratic lawmakers, bills aimed […]
Trump’s March of Folly
The Trump White House is neofascist in terms of its political base, its ideology, and the policies it is advocating. The rest of the U.S. state, the Congress, the judiciary… are not at present neofascist. So we are in a period which is analogous to what the Nazis called Gleichschaltung (bringing into line), which means […]
Surveillance: The mainstream media’s dismay with the tool of coercion
The article discusses surveillance in today’s capitalist society with a reference to a recent revelation that the German intelligence agency spied upon scores of foreign journalists.
Time on the Clock of The World: Amin Husain on How We Handle Trump
For months now we’ve gone to dozens of marches and rallies…. This isn’t enough, but what more to do? Then I happened on a Facebook post by Amin Husain: “I wish I could share what’s wrong and what’s missing in how we’re handling the Trump era without many of my dear friends thinking that I […]
America’s love affair with Salafi jihadists
Contrary to popular media portrayals, the Middle East wasn’t always plagued by regressive fundamentalism. Salafi jihadist groups like Al Qaeda were not popular in the region. They still aren’t. They have been violently imposed on people thanks in large part to the actions of the US, which has a longstanding pattern of backing religious fundamentalists […]
What Do These Crusading Warmongers Say About Iran?
Russia’s strategic alliance with Iran is at the heart of global tensions, and the speed and ferocity of statements by the new U.S. administration do little to allay concerns.… The crusading language of the new US administration is alarming and is engineered to promote “Iranophobia.” Once again the narrative that the Islamic Republic is on […]
Why you should join the #womensstrike on International Women’s Day and form a women’s council
Something new is taking shape in the world: in more than 30 countries, people are calling for an international women’s strike on the 8th of March.
Remembering Che on the 50th anniversary of his assassination
2017 is the 50th anniversary of the CIA-ordered assassination of Che Guevara. In light of a recent upsurge in denunciations of Che and the Cuban Revolution, it is important to separate fact from fiction. Here are 5 important points to take into account, all in historical context, drawn from countless reliable sources, especially the References […]
Politics of the Streets Meets the Politics of the Suites
Nearly three decades after his untimely death, Harold Washington’s time as mayor of Chicago offers important political lessons for current progressive activists and organizers. While he ran for office as a Democrat, Washington was, in effect, drafted by a grassroots movement that emerged from the city’s neighborhoods.… What emerged from Washington’s run was a two-way […]
Mythologies, Guns, Racism and the Death Penalty
This past week, I have read two judicial decisions that – once again – remind me how powerful mythologies are deployed to justify conduct that harms and mutilates human beings. However, in both cases, the majority of judges penetrate the mythology and see the case in human terms. The cases can therefore teach all of […]
Reading Marx’s Capital Today: Lessons from Latin America
One hundred and fifty years ago, Karl Marx published his book Capital, an intellectual effort of great breadth, with the aim of revealing the logic of capitalist production and providing workers with theoretical instruments for their liberation. Having discovered the logic of the system, he was able to foresee with great anticipation much of what […]
What Do ICE Raids Mean for the Rest of Us?
What would happen to Trump’s support if more of us understood that the real effect of ICE raids is the transfer of money out of workers’ paychecks into the bank accounts of unscrupulous employers like Trump himself?
The Rift in the Metabolism of Nature and Society
The truth is that the environmental problems and the mounting catastrophes facing humanity have everything to do with economic and environmental injustice and a society that put the accumulation of capital before people and the planet. This is so much the case that we will increasingly see the development of an environmental proletariat where the […]
Egypt 2016: Who was worse, Mubarak, Morsi or Sisi?
2016 was a very difficult year for the Egyptians. Most—both the average man and the political caste—even say it was / is the worst year in the country’s history. Attacking the “revolution” or uprising of 2011, its aims, symbols and representatives, has no longer become an excess of some “Mubarakists”, but obviously, the policy of […]
E.P. Thompson: A Giant Remembered
It is surely difficult now to grasp, for young people in the UK let alone the US and elsewhere, that thirty years or so ago, radical historian-activist Edward Thompson was by opinion polls intermittently the second or third most popular Englishman or Englishwoman, shortly after the Queen Mother. After all, the British establishment, to say […]
