IRR News 22 April 2021: A report for neoliberal times

22 April 2021 — Institute of Race Relations

Whilst the report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (CRED) has been derided by many individuals, academics, historians, trade unions, health professionals, MPs and most recently UN human rights experts, what has been muted in discussions is the wider historical context in which the report exists. This week on IRR News, Jenny Bourne provides a much-needed reflective piece, Sewell: a report for neoliberal times, which places the CRED report in context of other key reports from the last fifty years, revealing how it’s not the first time that an ‘independent’ report has reflected the ideology of a government.

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Afghanistan: US exit is with caveats

22 April 2021 — Indian Punchline

US to withdraw troops from Afghanistan by Sept 11, 2021

The United States and NATO are yet to begin the withdrawal of their forces from Afghanistan but the eyes are cast over the horizon at what lies after the ‘forever war’ formally ends. The US exit strategy in Afghanistan assumes the look of that random arbitrariness of a lottery that was the case with its Iraq war ending inconclusively in 2011.

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A Bit of Hope That Doesn’t Come from Miami: The Sixteenth Newsletter (2021)

22 April 2021 — Tricontinental

Mohsen Taasha Wahidi Afghanistan Rebirth of the Red 2017 3Mohsen Taasha Wahidi (Afghanistan), Rebirth of the Red, 2017.

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

After twenty years, the United States government – and the forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – will depart from Afghanistan. They said that they came to do two things: to destroy al-Qaeda, which had launched an attack on the United States on 11 September 2001, and to destroy the Taliban, which had given al-Qaeda a base. After great loss of life and the further destruction of Afghan society, the US departs – as it did from Vietnam in 1975 – in defeat: al-Qaeda has regrouped in different parts of the world, and the Taliban is set to return to the capital, Kabul.

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When Did the “Cold War” End? Part II

21 April 2021 — Internationalist 360°

Vladimir Acosta

Part I: When Did the “Cold War” End?

https://cdni.rbth.com/rbthmedia/images/2020.10/original/5f8e88e015e9f941a2784133.jpg

I have said on other occasions that our humanity, and not exclusively its youngest members, tends to live not only in the world of images, but also in the world of the immediate, and that its inclination to read is increasingly reduced. The current world power, its deceitful media, its websites and its networks are also determined, through confusion and the trivialization of everything, to ensure that the information we seek therein leaves us with little, everything muddled, and that our already disorganized memory becomes increasingly reduced, volatile and insecure. Therefore, as we continue the critical review of the Cold War begun in the previous article, it would not be superfluous to provide, not a useless summary, but a simple enunciation of its main facts, which today are confused or forgotten.

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Football: a people’s sport?

22 April 2021 — Michael Roberts Blog

by michael roberts

The collapse of the attempt to form a ‘super league’ of top European soccer teams by the billionaire owners of the big clubs is only an interrupted chapter in the story of the commodification of sport into profitable capitalist enterprises, owned and controlled by capital.  It is no accident that JP Morgan was the fund manager for the Super League plan – as the bank epitomises the role of global capital in controlling modern sport.  And it is no accident that the main drivers for the new league were the owners of Real Madrid, a football club controlled in the past by the corrupt Spanish monarchy and Francoism, the fascist wing of Spanish capital.

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