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Commentaries/Opinions

Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo and China’s President Xi Jinping at the 2018 summit in Beijing.

Ties between African countries and China are complex. Understanding this matters

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Yu-Shan Wu, Chris Alden and Cobus van Staden, The Conversation — The complex relationship between Africa and China has become even more complicated this year. Initially, 2018 was set to reaffirm the bond through the latest Forum on China-Africa Cooperation summit held in Beijing in September. The summit delivered its usual pageant of African leaders, side deals, and the announcement of a USD$60 billion financing package. The year also saw the recurrence of misgivings about…

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ida-b-wells

Ida B. Wells And The Women Pushing Back Today

By Commentaries/Opinions, Video/Audio

Audio by WNYC Studios — Journalist and activist Ida B. Wells is in some ways a forgotten figure, overlooked even in black civil rights history. But her reporting on lynchings across the South was unwavering in its mission: calling America out on racial injustice. And, why black women are no longer willing to play the role of “Magical Negro” in U.S. politics. The United States of Anxiety recently recorded a live…

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Donald Trump acknowledges the crowd after an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Missouri.

How Fascism Works review: a vital read for a nation under Trump

By Commentaries/Opinions

Yale professor Jason Stanley enters a growing literary field with a sober examination of an inflammatory political concept. By Tom McCarthy, The Guardian — One of the insidious ironies of fascist politics, the philosopher Jason Stanley writes in his arresting new book, is that talk of fascism itself becomes more difficult because it is made to seem outlandish. The normalization of the fascist myth “makes us able to tolerate what was once…

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Senator Lindsey Graham berating Democratic colleagues in defense of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, September 27, 2018.

White Men Have Good Reason to Be Scared

By Commentaries/Opinions

We’re coming for their power. By Kai Wright, The Nation — Hell hath no fury like a white man scorned. If you take nothing else from the Senate’s confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, take that much. Know that the angry hysterics of Lindsey Graham and Charles Grassley and Orrin Hatch were a continuation of the long, howling tantrum that began when Donald Trump descended from his tower in 2015. It is…

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William F. Buckley, Jr., Conservative Party candidate running for the office of Mayor of New York City, is shown outside the Overseas Press Club on Oct. 20, 1965. Buckley and his National Review magazine helped shape conservatives' self-conception of their racial positions.

Conservatives’ self-delusion on race

By Commentaries/Opinions

How the right created the illusion of colorblindness. By Joshua Tait, The Washingtion Post — Americans are at an impasse in their understanding of racism today. The activist slogan “Black Lives Matter” is met by the rejoinder “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter.” Colin Kaepernick’s NFL protest about racial injustice is perceived only as an anti-American blast. President Trump tells reporters he is “the least racist person” they will…

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Voting

Pay Attention: They Are Trying to Keep You From Voting

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Monique Judge, The Root — Are you registered to vote? Have you confirmed that your voter registration is valid and ready to go for Election Day? Even if you think you are positively sure everything is OK with your registration, double-check it again—it’s imperative that you do. According to a report by Salon, voters in Georgia stand a 1 in 10 chance of having been purged from the voting rolls.…

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Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh

Taught to rule: Why elite men like Brett Kavanaugh lie and cheat without consequences

By Commentaries/Opinions

By Chauncey Devega — Brett Kavanaugh is now a Supreme Court justice. The FBI’s limited investigation of the sexual assault accusations against him was clearly inadequate. Numerous leads were ignored and dozens of potentially important witnesses were not interviewed. Moving beyond a political cover-up to a level of gross malfeasance, the FBI — at the direction of Donald Trump’s White House — did not interview either Christine Blasey Ford or Julie Swetnick, two of Kavanaugh’s three…

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