February 20, 2024
"Richman argues against the usual approach of organisers to ignore the fortunes of ‘at will’ workers because their suffering presents workers with an incentive to join the union and pay their subs..."
February 20, 2024
"...It's no accident, as historians like to say, that the Founding Father George Washington was a grand real estate speculator, just like the 45th U.S. President..."
February 20, 2024
"...this is the problem that has actually plagued the entire attitude to vaccine development and production in this pandemic. A few companies have got the rights, and they are holding onto those rights, and they are only producing themselves. They must share this knowledge, and they must allow other producers, because that’s the only way we’re going to confront the crisis..."
February 20, 2024
"Here are a few pieces of advice I got from Michael, that I would have liked to have had earlier in my career: Make sure your case tells a story – a story of your client and a story of the law...Be wary of judicial and prosecutorial ego – but know that there are people with both power and conscience...Trust the capacity of jurors to learn and dispense justice...Decide what you want and ask for it...Don’t mistake lawyering for movement work – but don’t forget about the movement either...Believe that one case at a time can, over time, make a difference...Bring others along on your journey – and remember their contributions to it with graciousness and gratitude....."
February 20, 2024
"....activists ought to be clear-eyed about the limitations of regulatory interventions. While there is certainly utility in digital media and tech reform, antitrust legislation and similar policy courses are insufficient for large-scale social transformations that characterize Marxist aspirations..."
February 20, 2024
The Return of Nature is a genealogy of ecological thinking. The word ‘ecology’ was not in common usage until the twentieth century, leading many to consider ecological thinking a fairly recent development. However, in this impressive volume, John Bellamy Foster convincingly identifies a materialist ecological sensibility within works dating back a century prior to ecology’s popularization..."
February 20, 2024
How and why the U.S. left has tailed the ruling class on such a bedrock matter as conceptualizing white supremacy soars far beyond the confines of this brief response.....What does this mean for today? It means rejecting the new Cold War against Russians and Chinese and, instead, forging alliances with both. It means linking demands for reparations nationally with likeminded struggles in the Caribbean and Africa. It means realizing that the uncanny ability of some on the U.S. left to hand rhetorical weapons to the right to bash the oppressed – from “political correctness” to “cancel culture” – is hardly a coincidence or accident but simply another expression of a “cross-class alliance” that has propped up settler colonialism from its inception.....
February 20, 2024
One main thread runs through every aspect of every story: Stories of Black rebellion and resistance. When Horne tells of Texas' efforts to secede and the impact of the arsons of 1860, allegedly set by slaves, he comments, "Our enemies are the ones who put out the rumor that we're docile, because they want us to be docile today." That's fallacious, he says. "Arsons were one of our favorite tools. Arson, poisonings, insurrections, murders." And in fact, during the Madison administration, Africans actually joined the British in torching the White House in 1814, sending James and Dolly fleeing.
February 20, 2024
"...In 2018, Venezuela was only able to import $11.7 billion in goods, according to Torino Capital. The impact on medicine imports was especially destructive. According to U.S. economist Mark Weisbrot, while its economy was still growing in 2013, Venezuela was importing about $2 billion per year in medicine. By 2018, that amount had fallen to an astonishing low of $140 million—an especially horrifying development because medicines are much more difficult to substitute with local production than food. It is impossible to deny that a collapse in medicine imports has killed thousands of people between 2017 and 2018, as Mark Weisbrot and U.S. economist Jeffrey Sachs argued in a paper published in April 2019. Weisbrot and Sachs cite a 31 percent increase in general mortality in the 2017–2018 period, according to a survey by anti-Maduro Venezuelan academics. That increase works out to an extra forty thousand deaths...."
February 20, 2024
Seemingly the only people supporting the opposition and their supposed leader, Juan Guaidó, are outsiders like the United States government and the Biden administration, which continues to recognize Guaidó as President despite Guaidó never getting a vote...
