Why are US health-care costs far higher than elsewhere in the world? And why, if so much more is spent, are such critical outcomes as rates of infant and maternal mortality, life expectancy and treatments for serious diseases not significantly better – and often markedly worse – than in other economically comparable countries?… | more…

Political scientist, author, and activist, Marta Harnecker devoted her life to collaborating in building radical democracy in Latin American communities where people have, for generations, experienced crushing poverty and a near complete loss of control over their lives. In South America and the Caribbean, but especially in Cuba and Venezuela, Harnecker has worked directly with disenfranchised workers and peasants. In this latest work, Harnecker, with Spanish economist José Bartolomé, shares some of her wisdom on how this is being done, and how communities everywhere can gain empowerment. | more…

Born into a typical all-American and socially conservative family of Irish Catholic origin, it’s fair to say that Helena Sheehan’s eventual immersion in left politics would probably have come as much of a shock to her as it did to her immediate family… | more…

Gerald Horne’s Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music examines the economic, social, and political forces that shaped this music into a phenomenal U.S.—and Black American—contribution to global arts and culture. Horne assembles a galvanic story depicting what may have been the era’s most virulent economic—and racist—exploitation, as jazz musicians battled organized crime, the Ku Klux Klan, and other variously malignant forces dominating the nightclub scene where jazz became known… | more…

WILPERT: Joining me now to discuss the causes, consequences, and solutions to African Swine Fever is Rob Wallace….
WALLACE: Hello. I would say it was a pleasure to be here, but I think when Real News’s audience sees me, they know that some terrible disease has happened out there somewhere….” | more…

There are more than twenty-five comprehensive biographies of Marx, but none of them consider his life and work in equal, corresponding measure. This biography, planned for three volumes, aims to include what most biographies have reduced to mere background: the contemporary conflicts, struggles, and disputes that engaged Marx at the time of his writings, alongside his complex relationships with a varied assortment of friends and opponents…. | more…

Brandon Sankara, co-founder of the South L.A. nonprofit Wisdom From The Field and host of KPFK’s Freedom Now, talks to prolific author and historian, Gerald Horne, about the recent elections in South Africa, drawing on Horne’s recently released White Supremacy Confronted: U.S. Imperialism and Anti-Communism vs. the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela,/em>. They also discuss Gerald Horne’s latest book, soon to be published, Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music. | more…

Michael D. Yates, author of several books including his recent Can the Working Class Change the World?, talks to Eric Draister, host of CounterPunch Radio, about who’s working class, how we have already changed the world, and how we need to keep changing it… | more…

Gerald Horne, acclaimed historian and author of numerous books, including his forthcoming, Jazz and Justice: Racism and the Political Economy of the Music, talks with Brian Becker, host of Loud & Clear on Sputnik International | more…

In The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism, Gerald Horne weaves together a century of events and processes to demonstrate the depth to which colonial systems of slavery and settler colonialism, which significantly accelerated in the seventeenth century, influenced the foundation of the United States…. | more…

“Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health is the most shocking and inhuman.” Martin Luther King said these words in 1966, after more than half a century of failed efforts to achieve a national health program in the United States that provides universal access to services…. | more…

Michael Joseph Roberto of Greensboro had been working for several years on a book maintaining that fascism began to take root in the United States during the ‘so-called prosperous’ 1920s and the Great Depression of the 1930s. Then Donald Trump surprised him and most other Americans by winning the presidency in 2016. ¶ In Roberto’s eyes, Trump’s election confirmed and gave urgency to the ideas driving his book… | more…

Ronnie Kasrils, South African anti-apartheid activist, former South African Minister for Intelligence Services, and author of The Unlikely Secret Agent, appears on RT to talk with Afshin Rattansi, host of Going Underground, about current South African life, the ANC, and how, regarding the current Palestinian struggle, one apartheid compares to another… | more…