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Dispatches From the Wars

Portside
Counting up; White hiphop: Vanilla or strychnine?; New monsters under our beds; Living with mass murder; Unsecret storm; Do Not Resist? In Chicago

Exceptional Victims

Christian G. Appy Boston Review
The resistance to the Vietnam War was the most diverse and dynamic antiwar movement in U.S. history. Our genuflection to military service goes hand in hand with our failure to treat antiwar protestors as the real heroes of U.S. democracy.

Here’s How Workers Would Spend the Corporate Tax Cut – If They Had a Voice

Thomas Kochan The Conversation
So far, apart from some statements by union leaders, the workforce itself has been silent about the new tax law – which among other things cut the corporate rate to 21 percent from 35 percent – and how the extra money that will end up in corporate coffers should be spent. Perhaps this is because, by and large, they have lost their voice at work as unions have declined and Wall Street’s voices have ascended and become more dominate in corporate decision making.

Student Debt Slavery II: Time to Level the Playing Field

Ellen Brown The Web of Debt Blog
student graduation caps with debt protest
This is the second in a two-part article on the debt burden America’s students face. Read Part 1 here. The lending business is heavily stacked against student borrowers. Bigger players can borrow for almost nothing, and if their investments don’t work out, they can put their corporate shells through bankruptcy and walk away. Not so with students. Their loan rates are high and if they cannot pay, their debts are not normally dischargeable in bankruptcy. Rather, the debts compound and can dog them for life, compromising not only their own futures but the economy itself.

Concerned Citizens in Cancer Alley Vow to Ramp Up Battle Against Industrial Pollution in 2018

Julie Dermansky DeSmogBlog
anti-pollution activist monitorig site in Louisiana
This past year in Louisiana’s St. John the Baptist Parish, a small group of residents began organizing their community to compel the state to protect them against an invisible menace: the air they breathe. Their parish, the Louisiana equivalent of a county, is situated in what’s known as Cancer Alley, an industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans that hosts more than 100 petrochemical factories.