“Don’t Betray the Constitution. Withdraw CAB 2019″
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“Don’t Betray the Constitution. Withdraw CAB 2019″

More than 600 artists, writers, academicians, ex-judges and former bureaucrats have released an open letter asking the Narendra Modi-led government to withdraw the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, terming it is “discriminatory, divisive”, and violative of the secular principles enshrined in the Constitution. Here is the full text of the letter.   Since independence, Indian citizenship has…

What’s Wrong With the Republicans?  Fruits of the Twin Roots of Evil: Slavery and Imperial Expansion
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What’s Wrong With the Republicans? Fruits of the Twin Roots of Evil: Slavery and Imperial Expansion

Rebecca Gordon   On the Thursday of the second week of the House Intelligence Committee’s impeachment hearings, former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara had a special guest on his weekly podcast, Carl Bernstein. It was Bernstein, with fellow Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, whose reporting broke open the story of how the Committee to Re-elect the…

Capitalism and Robbery: The Expropriation of Land, Labor, and Corporeal Life

Capitalism and Robbery: The Expropriation of Land, Labor, and Corporeal Life

John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Hannah Holleman   The expropriation of the mass of the people from the soil constitutes the basis of the capitalist mode of production.   —Karl Marx(1)   “The power of abstraction,” Karl Marx noted, is absolutely crucial to the theoretical analysis of historical systems, as exemplified by his critique…

Murder Like It’s 1495: U.S.-Backed Counterinsurgency in the Philippines
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Murder Like It’s 1495: U.S.-Backed Counterinsurgency in the Philippines

Nick Alexandrov   Two men, soldiers probably, noticed Bai Leah Tumbalang. This was last August. She was in Valencia City, in the Philippine province of Bukidnon. The men drew near on their motorcycle, followed her, then pulled up to shoot her in the forehead. She died immediately.   But her death was not random, not…

France has Once Again Entered a Phase of Large-Scale Social Confrontation
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France has Once Again Entered a Phase of Large-Scale Social Confrontation

Léon Crémieux   A year ago, in November 2018, it was the Yellow Jacket movement that broke out on roundabouts and city streets across the country. Provoked by the government’s decision to introduce a new fuel tax, the movement very quickly highlighted the need for an increase in buying power, particularly the minimum wage, the…

Ayodhya’s Forgotten Mahant and His Message of Peace
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Ayodhya’s Forgotten Mahant and His Message of Peace

Valay Singh   As the 26th death anniversary of Baba Lal Das approaches, his memory stands virtually erased from Ayodhya. On November 16, 1993, Lal Das, a strident opponent of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Vishwa Hindu Parishad, was shot dead in the middle of the night in Ranipur Chattar village, just 20 km from…

The Imperialism of Finance Capital and ‘Trade Wars’
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The Imperialism of Finance Capital and ‘Trade Wars’

Jacky Muniello and Soy Migrante interview Prabhat Patnaik   Hegemony of Global Finance   What is your first impression about the ‘trade wars’ initiated by Trump? Is this a serious policy shift or is there something else that we need to be aware of?   I    believe    that the    whole discussion   …

Ludhiana is Where the Heart Still Beats, Simple Tales of Humanity and Brotherhood
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Ludhiana is Where the Heart Still Beats, Simple Tales of Humanity and Brotherhood

Ishmeet Nagpal    Recently I read about a heart-warming story from my birthplace Ludhiana (Punjab) about Sikh residents of village Hedon Bet who refuse to let anyone demolish the 100 year old Mosque in their village despite having no Muslim residents. The village elders stated that the Mosque is the house of God and no…

China Breaks the Western Debt Stranglehold on the World
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China Breaks the Western Debt Stranglehold on the World

Peter Koenig    The west has colonized, exploited, ravaged and assassinated the people of the Global South for hundreds of years.   Up to the mid-20th Century Europe has occupied Africa, and large parts of Asia.   In Latin America, though much of the sub-Continent was “freed” from Spain and Portugal in the 19th Century…

UK: Labour’s General Election Manifesto
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UK: Labour’s General Election Manifesto

  Kenneth Surin   Those of us who attended the Labour Party annual conference in September knew from the resolutions passed there that the party’s manifesto for the next election would offer a vision of socialism not seen since the immediate postwar Labour government. While not all conference resolutions find their way into the manifesto,…