“Black policemen were another matter. We used to say, ‘If you must call a policeman,”–for we hardly ever did–“for God’s sake, try to make sure it’s a White one.” A black policeman could completely demolish you. He knew far more about you than a White policeman could and you were without defenses before this Black […]
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It spread through our living unit in a matter of weeks. We were sick, and most of us knew it was probably COVID. A staff member that worked in the prison’s Correctional Industries Laundry Service had tested positive and been placed on leave. Prisoners knew they were sick, but no one wanted to report the […]
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Dear António Guterres, You rightly say, “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator”. This is evident to most people. What isn’t so evident is that the UN’s foot has been among the heaviest because of its role, for more than six decades now, in the covered-up genocide […]
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Carl Schmitt, the Nazi whose thought is still inexplicably in vogue at various Anglo-American political science departments, believed that the fundamental political distinction is the division between “friend” and “enemy.” That this division underlies much of politics, even in societies with the most genteel of political systems, is undeniable. On the Left, we view politics as a power struggle, a conflict between workers and capitalists, a battle between advocates of genuine democracy and adherents of economic and political autocracy. But members of the far right in many Western countries seem to be reviving the notion in a more violent, disturbing way. Trump’s rhetoric about the press, the Left, and other bugbears of his being “enemies of the people” culminated quite recently in the January 6 insurrection. Recent concerns about polarization and the calcification of domestic divisions between friend and foe have motivated a slew of op-eds and books about tribalism in the United States and Western Europe. In societies plagued by civil war or gang violence, the friend-enemy distinction is much more apparent. But it’s in the space between societies where the friend-enemy dichotomy becomes most salient: in fact, it is central to most international relations analyses.
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Image by Ibrahim Boran.
Wishing for central banks to act in the interest of working people rather than the financial industry is about as fruitful as hoping a starving wolf won’t eat the chicken that was just placed next to it. Pigs will fly, the Amazon will freeze over and Wall Street will give all its money away before a central bank in the capitalist core goes against its raison d’être.
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A major media story last month, Israel’s deportation of Palestinian attorney Salah Hamouri from East Jerusalem to France – though widely recognized as a war crime – is now old news. Another forgotten news item occurred a year earlier, in 2021, when the Israeli government, offering as evidence only “secret information,” summarily designated six Palestinian NGOs illegal “terrorist organizations,” claiming they were linked financially to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine [PFLP]. These NGOs – Al-Haq, Addameer, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International–Palestine, Union of Agricultural Workers Committees, and Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees – exist solely to defend the human rights of indigenous Palestinian children, women, prisoners, and farmers. Israel’s calling them terrorist seems tantamount to the United States calling the ACLU dangerous and illegal … which, according to Sahar Francis, could someday happen.
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Sometimes when I’m tired and my mind meanders into the weeds, into the scraggly irrelevancies that cling with weak and shallow roots to the flyblown edges of consciousness, I think of Matt Taibbi. We all know Matt: the one-time pseudo-gonzo heir of Hunter Thompson who is now embarked on a predictable, tedious, common-as-muck journey to […]
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Vicky Krieps as “Empress Elizabeth of Austria” in Marie Kreutzer’s “CORSAGE” Courtesy of Film AG. An IFC Films Release.
For some reason, royalty has been much in the news lately. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee was observed during the first half of 2022. Her Majesty’s September death set off a period of mourning. On November 9, the fifth season of the Netflix series about the Windsors, The Crown, dropped. In December, William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales, visited the USA. Not to be outdone, while they were in the “colonies” the Sussexes released the coming attractions for and then the multi-part Netflix series featuring Harry and Meghan. On December 7, an attempted coup plot to install Heinrich XIII Prince of Reuss as the head of state was foiled in Germany.
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What will ignite the fall of the Islamic Republic following the current mass protests by young women? The revolutionary spark for over three months seems to have become a mass wall of no fear. Backed by virtually the rest of the Iranian population from urban centres to rural areas; from oppressed provinces of Iranian Kurdish […]
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For the last 13 years, ever since James Cameron’s Avatar replaced another movie of his (Titanic) as the most commercially successful movie of all time, movie theaters around the world have shifted to digital projection. By the end of the 2010s, it felt like Avatar had left no cultural imprint, with no memorable images, scenes, […]
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El Paso-Ciudad Juárez. Carefully treading a crossing of slippery stones strung across the shallow Rio Grande between Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and El Paso, Texas, trickles of migrants climbed up the embankment on the U.S. side. Joining with others who had already crossed from down river, the asylum seekers waited peacefully to surrender to U.S. Customs […]
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Image by Anthony Garand.
Donald Trump’s recent rant that the U.S. Constitution should be “terminated” so that he can be installed as president for life merits no response, given the Orange one-man crime wave’s tenuous connection to reality. Laughter is the appropriate riposte as Trump’s futile attempts at becoming the fascist dictator he clearly aspires to be become ever more futile.
But is his latest childish tantrum really something to be laughed off? Having skipped the “tragedy” phase and gone straight to “farce,” Trump is facing what is likely to become a politically terminal case of irrelevancy as new contenders for Mussolini’s crown, most notably but not only Ron DeSantis, emerge. The nascent fascist movement that has coalesced around Trump, and the varieties of extreme right menace that shade into it that are now expressed through the Republican Party, are no laughing matter. And while embarrassed silence or a quick change of subject might be Republicans’ default position when asked to comment on Trump’s increasing irrationality due to their fear of the Frankenstein monster they have let loose, eviscerating the Constitution is actually on their agenda.
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Teddy Katz, as seen in Tantura directed by Alon Schwarz. Photo credit: Yonathan Weitzman. Courtesy of Reel Peak Films.
Alon Schwarz’s Tantura, which won the Philadelphia Film Festival’s Jury Award for Best Documentary Feature, reminds me of the 1990 West German narrative feature The Nasty Girl. In Michael Verhoeven’s movie, Lena (Sonja Rosenberger) is a postwar student who unearths her town’s fascist past. She literally has denazification files dusted off at the town’s archives, and against all odds, insists upon revealing the awful truth she has discovered about the now complacent townsfolk, much to their horror.
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On July 5, 2015, the Greek demos voted by a wide margin to turn down the bailout offered to them by their Troika of creditors – the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and the European Commission. At the time, the Greek Finance Minister was Yanis Varoufakis, who had spent most of his career […]
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In 2011, during the early days of the Arab Spring, Alaa Abd El-Fattah, 29-year-old software developer, blogger, and activist, made history as one of the leading architects of Egypt’s January 25 Revolution, which led to the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak. This year, on November 18, Alaa turned 41 in one of President Abdel Fattah […]
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There are few things less dignified—and more panic-inducing—than when you hear nature’s proverbial call in public, far away from a publicly available bathroom. Yet given the arrangement of public space in most large cities, such a disastrous situation is practically inevitable if you’re out and about for long enough. I had the misfortune of suffering […]
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Image by Xavier Balderas Cejudo.
This has become, sadly, a yearly ritual by now. The world’s governments gather together to discuss what should be done about global warming, and finish their time together by issuing statements of concern while doing little concrete to actually solve the problem. And so it is with COP27.
The 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to use the formal name for COP27, ended with what has the appearance of a breakthrough: An agreement on the establishment of a “loss and damage” fund for Global South countries severely affected by weather and environmental disasters triggered by global warming, and for which they bear almost no responsibility. This finally fulfills a pledge made at the 2009 Climate Summit in Copenhagen.
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I am at the barber’s, and a copy of Paris-Match is offered to me. On the cover, a young Negro in a French uniform is saluting, with his eyes uplifted, probably fixed on a fold of the tricolour. All this is the meaning of the picture. But whether naively or not, I see very well […]
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In this interview, College of Staten Island CUNY professor and anthropologist Philippe-Richard Marius, author of The Unexceptional Case of Haiti: Race and Class Privilege in Postcolonial Bourgeois Society (University Press of Mississippi, 2022) breaks down the social and political nature of Haiti’s racial and class structures, both past and present. Without undermining the incredible accomplishment […]
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Image by Hennie Stander.
If there is one message that seemed to surface through last month’s crucial meetings of the Communist Party of China it is continuity. The inference that might best be taken is no significant change from the path on which the party has led China in recent years should be expected.
That path, despite the oft-used slogan “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era,” has been a restructuring of the economy toward capitalism, albeit a gradual entry on Chinese terms and keeping the “commanding heights” of the economy in state hands. If we attempt to grasp the meaning of the communiqués and reports issued surrounding the party’s 20th National Congress, it would be better to observe through a holistic lens rather than fixating on personalities.
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You must always be puzzled by mental illness. The thing I would dread most, if I became mentally ill, would be your adopting a common-sense attitude; that you could take it for granted that I was deluded. – Ludwig Wittgenstein, to Maureen O’Connor Drury The public performance of mental illness has cost Sinéad O’Connor dearly—largely […]
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When you work as a freelance translator, strange constellations of things sometimes lob in a clump on your table, as if they want you to release them from their fragmentary state by trying to see them as a set. So, what came together last week was checking a translation into Catalan of a text by […]
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I admit that I struggle to feel kindness toward people in law enforcement uniforms, which is why this unexpected connection to a prison guard became all the more powerful. As far back as I can remember, I’ve dealt with police misconduct and abuse. At a young age I would sit listening to my family tell […]
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The Democrats are burning it all down.
They are going to lose the midterms because of the Ukraine War.
A Red Wave of extremists will sweep into office because of the Ukraine War.
Insurrectionists will have an inside path to a coup in 2024 because of the Ukraine War.
Biden is doubling down on fossil fuels ensuring climate catastrophe because of the Ukraine War.
The far right is gaining power across Europe because of the Ukraine War.
A food crisis has put tens of millions on the brink of starvation because of the Ukraine War.
It didn’t have to be this way.
Let me explain.
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One day over fifty years ago, in the boys’ restroom of a Long Island elementary school, a second-grader named Anthony Dixon got punched in the face by a teenaged boy. Anthony, knowing he was too small to punch back, bit: “I bit him real hard; blood was coming down.” The incident might have ended with […]
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Does anyone still care about Britain, the failed Empire? The British elites, both right-wing and “liberal,” are trained to believe that the UK is a special country, so they would certainly love to believe that global audiences care enough about Britain to wonder what is happening. Putting aside the attention-seeking jingoism, we should at least […]
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A Philadelphia lower state court jurist, Court of Common Pleas Judge Lucretia J. Clemons, has summarily rejected completely the latest and perhaps most dramatic legal challenge by Pennsylvania’s most well-known prison captive, Mumia Abu-Jamal of his 1982 conviction on a charge of murdering a white police officer. Abu-Jamal, charged as Wesley Cook for the Dec. […]
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Image by Markus Spiske.
There is no respite from class warfare. Past annual Global Rights Index reports issued by the International Trade Union Confederation have invariably shown that there is no country on Earth that fully protects workers’ rights and the 2022 edition is not only not an exception but finds that repression of labor organizing is increasing.
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Image by David Holifield.
What was the US response to the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews? Too little too late, says this latest Ken Burns documentary. While it is hard to disagree with this estimation, the production simultaneously fails to clearly enunciate important lessons for our contemporary political landscape, something no amount of somber klezmer music can overpower.
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I first learned of my cousin’s lynching when I was 10 years old. My family never talked about his murder in my presence, and, to this day, I have not heard them discuss it since. It is almost as if it never happened. I wonder if our failure to discuss this is a coping mechanism; […]
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