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'This is Just Practice' reads the sub-title of Marisa Holmes' book Organizing Occupy Wall Street, which is the latest addition to the Alternatives and Futures: Cultures, Practices, Activism and Utopias series. The book reverberates with revolutionary intent: a threat and a promise.

The post A Human Geography of the Space of The Square appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

This is from Axios the font of all beltway CW. It’s about time: Republicans are hammering “Joe Biden’s America” as a land of rising violent crime, surging immigration and out of control inflation, but there’s just one problem: the numbers are starting to move in the opposite direction. The big picture: With 2024 around the corner, the U.S. is making measurable progress in the areas where Biden has been most vulnerable to GOP attacks. Violent crime surged in U.S. cities during the pandemic and ranked as a top concern for voters in the 2022 midterms. Republicans slammed Biden and Democratic leaders for rising crime rates, and many Democrats started embracing a more centrist approach to policing. Homicides were down 9% in the first half of this year over the same period last year, according to a study of 37 major cities from the Council on Criminal Justice. State of play: Violent crime rates are generally down across the board, thought they’re still higher than 2019 levels.

It’s even worse than we knew Rolling Stone catches up with more Jason Aldean racism: JUST WHEN YOU thought there couldn’t possibly be anymore dog whistles embedded in the Jason Aldean “Try That in a Small Town” saga, an intrepid, sharp-eyed TikTok user has potentially picked out one more. Amazingly, this incident doesn’t involve the song itself, or even its controversial video — part of which was reportedly filmed outside a courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, the site of a 1933 lynching (and features a surprising amount of footage from Canada). Rather, it involves a promotional video shared on TikTok. It’s a largely innocuous lyric video with a newspaper theme, but as TikTok user Danny Collins discovered, there’s an actual old newspaper clipping featured in the video — and it’s tied to a Jim Crow-era story about a writer who was harassed for fighting segregation and white supremacy.  @dannyfcollins Thank you to my followers who tag me. All I’m saying is lets get real. To everyone supporting Jason Aldean what else do you need to see or hear? Accept accountability and do better.

Fresh from a recent trip to Ukraine, veteran anti-war activist Medea Benjamin speaks on the Biden administration’s controversial move to send cluster munitions to the country and more in this revealing interview with Alan Macleod.

The post Biden’s Desperation and the Human Cost of Cluster Munitions in Ukraine, with Medea Benjamin appeared first on MintPress News.

A new analysis shows the most widely cited happiness studies relied on poor research methods.

The post Bummer: Popular Happiness Strategies Are a Bust appeared first on Nautilus.

Annie Lowrey in the Atlantic had an interesting take on why so many people are unhappy in this booming economy: Dr. Dre on the radio, The Matrix on the big screen, The Sopranos on TV: The year 1999 was wonderful for many reasons, including economic ones. That year, the median household income rose to a record level, a watermark that held for nearly two decades. (The average American family was poorer when Donald Trump was running for office than when Bill Clinton left office.) Wages were growing across the board—all kinds of workers were getting consistent raises. Productivity growth was strong. Wealth inequality was holding steady and far lower than it is today. The poverty rate hit its lowest point in years. I could go on and on with the hard statistics: The share of workers with a college degree was climbing. The homeownership rate was booming. The stock market, booming. Consumer confidence was the highest it has ever been. The share of people employed was the highest it has ever been. Investor optimism was the highest it has ever been.

During this live event, the Lever team and paid subscribers discussed the troubling legacy of SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts.

Former Australian Prime Minister (yep, really) Scotty from marketing, has tweeted out to Twitter owner Elon Musk to ask him to give him a call so they can talk about branding and employment opportunities. ”Elon is a bloke with a... Read More ›

In the third part of a three-year special investigation, Byline Times details the trauma of a man controlled for 10 years by Martin Branning – the pseudonym of TV presenter Dan Wootton

If Trump wins the WH again, get ready to go backwards Axios reports: A reelected Donald Trump could pull several levers to try and pare back federal policies aimed at speeding the transition to electric vehicles. Why it matters: EVs are becoming more mainstream, but they’re still a small share of U.S. car sales, and President Joe Biden has been keen to juice deployment. Catch up fast: Trump, the GOP frontrunner, released a video late last week that, among other things, bashed EV costs. He vowed to reverse what he called a “ridiculous Green New Deal crusade.” Trump’s seeking auto workers’ votes in competitive states like Michigan, at a time when the United Auto Workers leadership is skittish about EVs. The big picture: It’s hard to see the votes for outright repealing the Democrats’ climate law or the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill, even if Republicans have both chambers of Congress after 2024. Yes, but: Trump would hardly be powerless. Zoom in: His campaign released a list of proposals alongside the video.

Recently, an Indiana Moms for Liberty chapter included—and attributed—a quote from Adolf Hitler in their...

What do the governments of other US allies, including Hungary, Norway, the Philippines, and the former puppet government of Afghanistan, possess that Australian governments do not? The answer is a conception of genuine sovereignty, and obligations to transparency that are foreign to Australian governments, particularly the incumbent Albanese government. In November 2011, Prime Minister Julia Continue reading »

Espionage, surveillance and monitoring in a society require guile, judiciousness, and care. Secrecy matters. Inserted agents assume roles for years as friends even as they are purloining your secrets. They are the charming thespians of treachery. Then come those who work in plain sight, drawing salaries from foreign powers, yet tolerated for the services they Continue reading »

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The ‘end’ of the Korean War. Two anniversaries that almost intersect. At the end of WWII, a new order was imposed on the world. Today, as those anniversaries are marked, there is little to celebrate. Seventy years ago, on the 25th July, the Korean War technically came to an end. Continue reading »

Integrity, accountability and stewardship are, post the Robodebt royal commission, to be the watchwords of the hour. The cynic will note that the agencies to oversee changing the culture are those which did most, in word and deed, to create, foster and promote the old culture, and that not one of them has publicly examined Continue reading »

Australia’s first wellbeing framework, announced by the Treasurer under the Measuring What Matters banner, is important and can play a vital part in setting national direction and navigating significant challenges for Australia in the years to come. The framework uses larger and more diverse data to bring depth and resolution to the picture drawn by Continue reading »

Britain has commissioned a prison hulk to house immigrants, in a cruel re-enactment of history. Meanwhile, Texas Governor Greg Abbott has implemented two strategies to stop immigrants crossing the Rio Grande into America: one is a floating barrier with razor wire and rolling motion that pulls people under the water; the other is an apparent Continue reading »

When it comes to a ‘pivot state’ in Asia against China, the security apparatus of South Korea’s Yoon Suk-yeol is ignored or given a free pass by the West. Tens of thousands protest in the streets, calling on their leader to resign and clashing with riot police. The government denounces them as stooges and spies; Continue reading »

It appears that COVID is not going to be a big issue in the 2024 election and perhaps we should be grateful for that. It was only three years ago that the entire world was in a health crisis the likes of which we hadn’t seen in over a hundred years. In July of 2020 tens of thousands of Americans were dying each day in the first wave of a deadly pandemic and President Donald Trump was all over television alternately telling the people that they could cure themselves with unapproved drugs like Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin or telling them that the virus was going away and the economy needed to just open up and carry on as usual. It was a terrifying time and the trauma it caused has been very deep. 1.1 million people have died from COVID in the U.S. so far leaving many more family members and friends dealing with the grief and the loss. It’s only recently that it has felt like the country is getting back to normal with the economy fully recovering and a sense of freedom in our business and social interactions. But we may have changed permanently in some respects and not necessarily for the better.