Although China now has an urban majority, the key to its development since 1949 lies in the vast countryside. Maoist land reform redistributed land on a huge scale, but the country’s rulers are still reluctant to discuss the darker side of its history.
California’s legislature is voting on a climate bill that would require companies — including fast-food giants like In-N-Out — to disclose the largely hidden indirect emissions involved in production and consumption. Big business is fighting it tooth and nail.
The European Commission has proposed a slight loosening of debt limits — but Germany’s neoliberal finance minister Christian Lindner is blocking the change. His zombie economics will impoverish citizens and hasten the rise of the far right.
America’s blood plasma industry is the largest in the world and preys on the economically desperate.
Mexican president AMLO and the Drug Enforcement Administration have been involved in a heated war of words following revelations of covert operations on Mexican soil. At the same time, an extensive web of corruption within the agency is being laid bare.
A law proposed by New York socialist legislators would prohibit charitable organizations in New York from funding Israel’s illegal settlements — and pick a fight with the powerful pro-Israel organizations that regularly try to destroy progressive candidates.
Hollywood is often portrayed as a haven of elitist liberalism. To the extent that’s true, it’s partly because the Hollywood blacklist made it so difficult to produce working-class movies like the 1954 classic Salt of the Earth.
South Carolina’s 2022 Democratic candidate for governor, Joe Cunningham, has just become the national director of the group No Labels, the third-party astroturf campaign that could help tank Joe Biden’s reelection.
Minnesota just passed a paid parental leave program. But the plan has no minimum benefit and entirely excludes all new parents who did not earn $3,500 in the 12 months leading up to birth.
As the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces clash with the Sudanese Armed Forces, both sides are causing widespread destruction. The Sudanese people, meanwhile, are organizing to survive and keep the struggle for democracy going.
Amid raging wildfires and evacuations, Alberta is grappling with political inertia. Fighting for a livable future in the climate-denying, oil-producing province will require a bold politics of anti-austerity and just transition policies.
Thanks to activist efforts, corporate and government policies have begun to make insulin more affordable for diabetics. These changes were won by exposing Big Pharma’s role in the US’s unjust for-profit health care system.