Afleveringen
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The Trump administration is planning a series of grand patriotic events for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. From a massive Ultimate Fighting Championship match on the South Lawn of the White House on June 14th - which is both Flag Day and Trumpâs 80th birthday - to a ball drop in Times Square, a Grand Prix on the streets of DC in August and the Great American State Fair spanning the course of two weeks on the National Mall - the America 250 and Freedom 250 celebrations are set to take over the summer across the country.
America 250, led by the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, has been a decade in the making and says theyâre striving for â350 for 250â - âengaging all 350 million Americans by our nationsâ 250th anniversary.â The Trump administrationâs Freedom 250, with sponsors like Northrop Grumman, and Moms for Liberty and the Museum of the Bible, seeks to celebrate âthe triumph of the American spirit.â The two initiatives might seem radically different, with media and administration figures criticizing one or the other, but both intentionally leave out real parts of the history of the United States: the legacy of slavery and indigenous genocide and the racism thatâs still with us today, centuries of wars and conquest, mass oppression, but also the resistance and struggle of workers and other oppressed people in the United States. Those true stories wonât be told by either America 250 or Freedom 250.Support the show
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From the Governor of California to the Mayor of Pensacola and Senate seats in Massachusetts, Ohio and beyond, socialist candidates and ideas are gaining momentum across the country. Theyâre talking about common-sense ideas that resonate with everyday people - things like public seizure of the 100 biggest corporations, abolishing the Supreme court, reparations for Black Americans, slashing the Pentagon budget, abolishing ICE, expanding housing, public transit and access to medical care and much more.
The popularity of socialist candidates and ideas is a reflection of the multiple crises of capitalism that get worse every day. As people canât afford the basics for survival like food, transportation and shelter, itâs clear that the money is there - but capitalist governments prioritize spending it on war, terrorizing communities with immigration raids and bailing out giant corporations.
Also on this episode, we discuss the baseless early-morning raids that happened last week targeting organizers with the immigrant rights group VC Defensa in Ventura County, CA. Listen to our 2025 interview with two VC Defensa organizers: https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/07/30/covertaction-bulletin-ventura-county-organizes-against-ice/
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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The Pentagon has released hundreds of declassified files, pictures and videos relating to UAPs - Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena - more popularly known as UFOs. The materials date back to the late 1940s and include firsthand but generally uncorroborated narratives from military officers and civilians as well as grainy photos and videos that could really be anything.
Various government and private investigations into whether extraterrestrials have tried to make contact have never come up with anything conclusive. But since the end of World War II and the start of the Space Race and the Cold War, UFO culture in the United States has always intersected with fear of others and distrust in the system on the one hand, and government secrecy and coverup on the other hand - going as far as the Pentagon testing planes and surveillance equipment and blaming sightings on aliens.
Many questions are still open. Are we alone? Have we been visited? But perhaps most importantly, why is the Trump administration releasing these files now?
Plus: Sign the petition to pardon whistleblower John Kiriakou: https://change.org/PardonJohn
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In over 3,500 cities and towns across the United States, workers took to the streets on May 1st for a day of no work, no school, and no shopping on the fourth day this year of mass organized action. Following the January 23rd and 30th shutdowns that started in Minneapolis and spread coast to coast and the No Kings Day in March, May Day was the latest in whatâs becoming a building process of collective power and consciousness. Around the world, May Day or International Workersâ Day, is a celebration of the power of workers and our movements. Many countries mark it as an official labor holiday.
ICE raids continue to terrorize immigrant communities around the country. The fragile ceasefire with Iran is marked by regular threats to resume and intensify with a ground invasion. Trump on Friday signed another executive order trying to starve the Cuban people of resources by further restricting trade. Gas prices and costs of consumer goods continue to soar. And the Supreme Court has taken another step in rolling back hard-won civil rights in its decision in Louisiana v. Callais, attacking core provisions of the Voting Rights Act.
Itâs becoming more clear to so many that only the power of the people will stop the attacks of the Trump regime and the system it represents.Support the show
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Imagine being forced to prove how old you are - and having it verified by a third party - before unlocking your phone or signing up for a social media site. Thatâs the goal of legislation introduced or passed in some U.S. states, the UK and Australia. Age verification requirements for social media and âadult contentâ are being proposed across the US, Europe and beyond with the justification of protecting children. But verifying your age basically means scanning your ID, and therefore tying your online presence with your real-world identity. Not only will this exclude millions of people who donât have government IDs, it attacks people who need to speak out anonymously against injustice, including whistleblowers.
Even beyond age verification for social media, Californiaâs Assembly Bill 1043 goes into effect on January 1st, 2027 and requires operating systems - Windows, macOS and Linux among others, to perform age segmentation at the base level of the phone or computer system.
The surveillance state loves the idea of age verification, which does very little to protect children as it claims to do - but does a lot to silence dissent, prevent the spread of information and silence free speech.Support the show
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Congress is set to vote soon on reauthorization of the Section 702 warrantless surveillance program, part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. 702âs authorization expires on April 20th. On its surface, the program allows intelligence agencies to spy on non-citizens outside the United States - without their knowledge, or the consent of their governments. But people inside the US can be and are caught up in this surveillance if theyâre in contact with targets of the program for any reason - including,as noted by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, âbusiness or personal reasonsâ not associated with any criminal activity.
The intelligence community is on a propaganda tour ahead of the renewal votes, saying the program helped them prevent an attack on a Taylor Swift concert in Austria and to kill El Mencho, a Mexican cartel leader. But regardless of the vote, the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has already approved the program through March of 2027 - regardless of what Congress votes on regarding the renewal of Section 702.
PLUS: Democrats are ignoring their own recent history of criminalizing student protest to claim there are no left-wing protests under Trump as the midterms come up - and more.Support the show
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NOTE: This episode was recorded hours before the announcement of the 2-week ceasefire on April 7th.
Just a day after Donald Trump made a national prime-time address on April 1st claiming the US is âwinning and winning bigâ in the war on Iran, an American F-15E Strike Eagle fighter plane was shot down over a mountainous region of eastern Iran, kicking off a frantic search-and-rescue and a covert misinformation operation by the CIA within Iran. The U.S. military has over 200 F-15E planes, at a cost in 2026 dollars of $65 million each and the next-generation F-15EX set at about $100 million each. The war on Iran has cost about $43 billion so far.
But at an Easter luncheon earlier on April 1st, Trump also said he told Russel Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, âDonât send any money for day care, because the United States canât take care of day care.â and went on to say, âItâs not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things,â saying that the federal governmentâs priority should be wars and weapons while people still go hungry, without housing and without healthcare. And heâs effectively threatened genocide against the Iranian people and the entire region.
The Trump administration and Project 2025 have been shaking the core of civilization like an earthquake shakes a building. The question of what comes after this structure breaks is at the core of how we move forward.Support the show
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Cuba is set to receive oil for the first time in 2026, following the March 31st arrival at Matanzas Bay of the Russian tanker Anatoly Kolodkin with over 730,000 barrels, or 100,000 tons, of crude oil. The tanker and its owner, the state-owned company Sovcomflot, have had sanctions on it since 2024. Late last year, the Trump administration announced severe tariffs on any country selling oil to Cuba and, after the kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro and Cilia Flores, prevented Venezuelan ships from reaching the island. All of this on top of decades of sanctions put the island into a severe fuel shortage, an attempt to strangle and starve the population. The delivery of the Russian tanker is a much-needed event and pokes a hole in the U.S. blockade of Cuba, but much more remains to be done.
Also in March, the Nuesta America convoy to Cuba brought people from around the hemisphere and the world to Cuba in solidarity, bringing with them aid including solar generators and solar panels to help Cuba advance its renewable energy infrastructure in the face of the blockade. Our guest today was part of the Youth Brigade of dozens of organizers who went to Cuba, where he met, exchanged and stood together with Cuban youth, building bonds of solidarity. Weâll now welcome Phill Campbell, an organizer and member of Artists Against Apartheid to the show.Support the show
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Former FBI Director Robert Muller died on March 20th. He entered into that position on September 4th, 2001. Within eight weeks of the 9/11 attacks, the FBI had arrested over 1,200 people - mostly Muslim men in the United States. None of them were shown to have any connection to Al Qaeda, but that didnât deter the FBI and its partners in local law enforcement agencies like the NYPD from heightening their surveillance of Muslim communities, even sending informants into mosques.
All of this was done under the presidencies of George W. Bush and then Barack Obama, who convinced the Senate to allow Mueller to serve an extra two years on top of the 10-year term for FBI directors. It was also under the shadow of the War on Terror, powered by the PATRIOT Act to destroy lives and curtail rights abroad and at home.
But Mueller underwent an image transformation about a decade ago. Rather than rightly being decried as an enemy of the people and of civil liberties, he led the charge on the so-called Russiagate hoax, kicking off years of delusional frenzy among liberals that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to get Donald Trump elected.Support the show
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Swarm Forge. Enderâs Foundry. Project Grant. Open Arsenal. These are the names of just some of the âPace-Setting Projectsâ that Pete Hegseth identified in a January memorandum on the âArtificial Intelligence Strategy for the Department of War.â Their names are as hard to take seriously as âOperation Epic Fury,â but like the war, the Pentagonâs AI initiatives are already having a significant impact on the world. AI systems were reportedly used to select targets for more than 1,000 attacks in the first days of the war on Iran. Itâs investing heavily in targeting systems, data collection and analysis, and even autonomous weapons that can take instructions and then independently engage in missions, destroying and killing without immediate human feedback.
Private companies wonât be left out of it, either - the Pentagon plans to âleverage the hundreds of billions in private sector capital investment being made in Americaâs AI sector through our growing array of creative partnerships with Americaâs world-leading companies.â From Palantir and Anduril to xAI, OpenAI and Google billions of dollars continue to be spent every year on using AI to âincrease lethalityâ - to make the U.S. military even more of a threat around the world.Support the show
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The 82nd Airborne Division has canceled a training exercise to keep the Division ready to deploy with just 18 hours of notification for what it calls âforcible entry parachute assaults.â Parts of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, or THAAD, are being moved from South Korea to the Middle East. As we are recording on Tuesday, March 10th, Pete Hegseth said it would be âyet again, our most intense day of strikes inside Iran - the most fighters, the most bombers, the most strikesâ with the Pentagon claiming more than 5,000 targets have been hit inside the country - including what we now know was a double-tap strike on a girlâs school in Minab last week.
While the Pentagon is playing up its use of technology and in particular AI in war, the fighting by and large still requires people flying the plains, maintaining the equipment, and filling those often-referenced âboots on the ground.â According to the Center on Conscience and War, their phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from service members and families looking for options to refuse to fight Trumpâs war.
Weâre joined by Mike Prysner, the Executive Director of the Center on Conscience and War, which you can find online at https://centeronconscience.org.
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The US/Israeli war on Iran could easily spark a greater regional conflict if it continues. Donald Trump at first said Tehran would be taken in 3-4 days, then a day later claimed the war would last no more than 4-5 weeks and threatened that the US has enough weapons to fight âforever.â Already, the bombing has killed 787 people, including 180 at a girlsâ school in Minab on Saturday as Operation Epic Fury began.
Iran is responding in self-defense with attacks on important regional bases and centers in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, the UAE and Israel after the bombings killed the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. An Israeli strike on Tuesday then bombed the Council of Experts in the holy city of Qom as they began deliberations on appointing a new leader. The White House has outlined its goals for the war, including the complete elimination of the Iranian government - a regime change operation.
On the killing of Khamenei, Trump told ABC News âI got him before he got me,â suggesting a paranoia around supposed Iranian threats to him.
The US/Israeli attacks and the Trump administrationâs frantic and sometimes contradictory messaging might seem out of the ordinary, but deeper analysis shows that this war is not uniquely Trumpâs. Itâs an unprovoked, imperialist war of aggression like so many others that the US has launched on the people of the Middle East and beyond in its quest for complete domination of the world. Itâs the latest in a long series of US interventions in Iran, starting with the 1953 US/British coup that overthrew the secular, nationalist government of Mohammad Mosaddegh and continuing through this past summer and today.
This war is also not a war that the US can win. Will imperial hubris land the region in another deadly, expensive âforever war?âSupport the show
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Is the U.S. government preparing to go to war with Iran? Leading up to talks set to happen towards the end of the week in Geneva, the Trump administration has also threatened Iran with war, saying the country has â10 to 15 daysâ as of February 20th to agree to a deal - putting Trumpâs one-sided deadline somewhere in the first week of March.
In apparent preparation for military strikes, massive amounts of military equipment have been sent to the region, including dispatching the USS Gerald R Ford, the worldâs largest aircraft carrier, to the Arabian Sea near the Persian Gulf. At least 120 aircraft, including F-35 stealth strike fighters and F/A 18-E Super Hornets, have been sent to the region with the Ford, in addition to E-3 Sentry AWACS (Airborne Warning and Control System) used for command & control operations as well as surveillance. The Ford will be joining the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is already off the coast of Oman.
As we come up on the 23rd anniversary of the 2003 US war on Iraq as well as the 15th anniversary of the US-led NATO invasion of Libya, weâll look back at what led up to them, the lessons learned from the anti-war movement of the period, and how we can stop the next war:
Stand for self-determination and against imperialist aggressionThe primary responsibility of those in the US is to oppose their governmentâs actionsDonât fall into the trap of tailing the Democrats, the graveyard of social movements.Support the show
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While border czar Tom Homan announced last week that the surge of federal agents in Minnesota could be winding down, he signaled that other cities could be next. âIâm hoping other sanctuary cities look at what happened,â he said, threatening cities that have various levels of protection for undocumented residents.
Itâs unclear where ICEâs next moves might be, but they have also been ramping up their surveillance online. The Department of Homeland Security has sent hundreds of administrative subpoenas to social media companies like Discord, Reddit, Google and Meta, parent company of Facebook and Instagram, trying to identify users who have posted about them over the last few months. The subpoenas request identifying information about users who may be using pseudonyms online - things like real names, phone numbers, email addresses and more. Because they are administrative and not judicial warrants, the companies arenât generally required to blindly comply with the majority of these requests - but recent reporting shows that the social media giants seem to be more than happy to hand over data on their users who are engaging in protected free speech behavior.
While trying to unmask anonymous online users, DHS is also now enabling agents to engage in what it calls âmasked engagementâ - creating fake accounts and identities and using sophisticated tools to keep them straight and prevent them from being caught up in spam or fraud filters. Beyond simply viewing whatâs publicly available online, agents are now able to directly connect with users on platforms by friending or liking them, giving them access to information that might not be shared with the public.
We also discuss the upcoming Senate vote on the SAVE Act, a major threat to the basic right to vote in the United States.Support the show
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The situation in Cuba is dire as the Trump administration ramps up its campaign to destabilize the country and destroy its revolution. The island has not been able to import a single drop of oil all year, according to President Miguel DĂaz-Canel. Tanker ships headed to Cuba from Venezuela were intercepted and seized by the U.S. military, which has been significantly building up its naval presence in the region with a blockade of both countries.
A January executive order targets the countries that supply Cuba with the majority of its oil - including Russia, Mexico and Venezuela - with significant tariffs. This would be an expansion of the sanctions regime that has tried and failed to cut off the island from the rest of the world for decades.
Without the ability to receive oil for energy, Cuban infrastructure faces a massive crisis. It produces 40% of the energy it needs and imports the rest. Without the ability to import oil, services as basic as hospitals and even water sanitation could be threatened.
These moves by the U.S. are certainly part of the so-called Donroe Doctrine of Donald Trump, but are also an extension of over 60 years of attempted regime change against the socialist nation thatâs been able to provide much for its people and the world while struggling against imperialism just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.
Sign the Call to Conscience open letter at LetCubaLive.infoGet your ticket for our webinar Cuba & Venezuela in Crisis on February 24th at CovertActionMagazine.com
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As we reported last week, well over 100,000 people shut down Minneapolis on January 23rd in response to the terror of ICE and CBP agents. The next Friday, in response to a call that originated with the Somali Student Association at the University of Minnesota, businesses across the country shut down and people went to the streets in hundreds of cities, continuing the protest movement nationwide.
Even the Trump administration has been forced to make moves in response, replacing Greg Bovino with Tom Hohman on the ground in Minnesota and with Kristi Noem making the weak promise that DHS officers starting in Minneapolis and then nationwide will get bodycams when funding is available. After the killings of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good were caught on multiple cameras, the suggestion that bodycams will solve ICE brutality isnât fooling anyone. Half-measures and anything short of getting rid of ICE simply wonât cut it. On their website nationalshutdown.org, organizers promise that âthis was just the beginningâ and demand âICE out of everywhere.â
And, we get into what the release of even more Epstein files really means. With so many rich, famous and influential figures named, what will it take to really get justice for their victims?Support the show
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Rachel was in Minneapolis last week where over 100,000 people took to the streets and reports on the mass action that happened Friday, shutting down businesses, schools and the city in response to the Trump administrationâs deployment of ICE to Minneapolis and the brutal killing of Renee Nicole Good earlier this month. The next day, CBP agents killed Alex Pretti, a VA nurse, while he was pinned to the ground, firing 10 rounds in less than 5 seconds. Again the people of Minneapolis and beyond have risen up, with multiple mobilizations taking place over the weekend despite continued freezing cold temperatures. And a call for no business as usual on a national scale has come out of Minneapolis for this Friday, January 30th. High school students are preparing walkouts, and people all over the country are getting ready to shut it down for justice.
The ruling class is responding frantically to quell the mass sentiment. An open letter from dozens of Minnesota-based corporations like Target, 3M, Hormel and more calls for âan immediate deescalation of tensions.â The Trump administration has had calls they call productive with Democratic officials in Minneapolis and Minnesota governments. And Gregory Bovino, the âCommander-At-Largeâ of US Border Patrol, seems to be set to go back to California and slowly make his way to retirement. Even with rumored departures of some ICE and CBP forces from Minneapolis, these small changes and concessions are proving to not be enough for the masses of people.Support the show
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Mass protests have taken place across the country after an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good in Minneapolis, executing her in her car as she tried to drive away. The shooting has ignited an extraordinary wave of resistance. In the Twin Cities and beyond, students walked out of school on Monday in protest, refusing to sit in silence while federal immigration officers operate with impunity in their cities and refusing to accept state violence in their neighborhoods as normal.
People across the United States have taken to the streets demanding accountability and justice, that ICE agent Jonathan Ross be arrested and charged and that ICE terror be stopped immediately. As weâve seen in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles, this mass resistance has the power to effect great change. In response, Donald Trump on Tuesday claimed a âday of reckoning & retribution is comingâ to Minnesota. Unions, faith groups, community organizations and more in Minnesota have called for a âday of truth and freedomâ on Friday, January 23rd, asking people to refuse to work, to shop and to go to school - effectively calling for a general strike. âWe are going to prove that people care for each other. That people love on one another. That community stands with and for each other,â said JaNaĂ© Bates Imari, Auxiliary Minister of St. Paul's Camphor Memorial United Methodist Church. She went on, âFreedom is not just the freedom from constraints. It is the freedom to have safety, it is the freedom to have joy, it is the freedom to be able to thrive.â
ICE isnât just going door-to-door terrorizing communities. Itâs spying on entire neighborhoods and cities. Its operations are powered by data from multiple government sources including the IRS, Medicaid, the TSA as well as commercial location data, and the agency has contracted with surveillance company Palantir to build the so-called ImmigrationOS to target and prioritize immigration raids. Palantir has secured more than $900 million in federal contracts under the Trump administration.
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At his first court appearance in New York along with his wife Cilia Flores, NicolĂĄs Maduro told the judge, âI am innocent. I am not guilty. I am a decent man, the constitutional president of my country.â He declared himself a prisoner of war and a political prisoner, and along with Flores pleaded not guilty to all of the ridiculous counts of narcoterrorism and gun charges against him. Outside the court on January 5th, supporters rallied and chanted, âno boots on the ground, no bombs in the air, U.S. out of everywhere.â
The attack on Venezuela that killed at least 80 people, the kidnapping of Maduro and Flores and the threats against Colombia, Mexico and Cuba are the implementation of the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, laid out in the 2025 National Security Strategy. As the State Department simply and grotesquely put it in an X post, âThis is our hemisphereâ is the renewed focus of the U.S. empire.
Itâs a very dynamic situation that calls for urgent action. Within hours of the news of the attack on Saturday, tens of thousands of people in over 100 cities in the United States took to the streets to condemn it and the further threats made by Trump and his administration. Many more in Venezuela and around the world have mobilized against this raw act of gangster imperialism.
This is a war on multiple fronts: military, economic, political and information - and disinformation intended to sow distrust and chaos has been spreading wildly.
PLUS: We bring you an interview with Jessica Plichta, who was arrested by Grand Rapids Police Department for speaking out against U.S. intervention in Venezuela.
Read the article we mentioned in Peoples Dispatch: Venezuelaâs Revolution still stands: debunking Trumpâs psyop
Read more coverage in CovertAction Magazine:
CIA Played Instrumental Role in Maduro Kidnapping
On The Ground in Caracas: Venezuelans Rally to Support Government in Face of Illegal Kidnapping of PresidentSupport the show
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As 2025 comes to an end and we enter a new year, weâre looking back on the past 12 months that sometimes feel like a never-ending cycle of bad news.
The year began with Trumpâs inauguration,kicking off massive protests in cities and towns across the country that have continued throughout the year, spawning the No Kings movement as well as other national and local resistance. Instead of quietly letting the Trump administration implement Project 2025 and worse, peoplesâ movements have taken action to defend education, workersâ rights, LGBTQ rights, womenâs rights and more.
Itâs also been a year of fightback against war and imperialism. As Trump has had meetings with Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelenskyy over the last weekend of 2025, the U.S. is ramping up its attacks on Venezuela, including a possible CIA-run drone bombing earlier in December of a port facility. Even with a ceasefire agreement in place, Israel continues to bomb and displace Palestinians, and the solidarity movement continues to organize for an end to U.S. support for Israel and its genocide, connecting Palestine with Venezuela, Nigeria, Yemen, Syria and the many other countries the U.S. has bombed this year.
Going into 2026, weâre not just reviewing what happened over the last year but looking at the lessons that movements need to learn for another year of oppression - and struggle.Support the show
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