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The new generation of Villagers take their seats at the table Here’s how the super insider Punchbowl is reporting the news today: Happy Monday morning. In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we’re only publishing the AM edition. We’ll be back to the regular schedule tomorrow. President Joe Biden’s split screen on Sunday was stark. Biden spoke at a memorial service for the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. The high-profile speech came at the invitation of Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), the senior pastor there. On what would’ve been MLK’s 94th birthday, and from King’s own pulpit, Biden warned that the United States is at an “inflection point,” with the future of democracy in peril. “We’re at what we would call an inflection point. One of those points in world history where what happens … in the next six or eight years is going to determine what the world looks like for the next 30 or 40 years. It happened after World War II.

The world’s richest 1% captured over two-third of all wealth created by humanity since 2020, leaving just one-third for the other 99% of the population, claims a report published by Oxfam on Monday, January 16.

The report, titled ‘Survival of the Richest,’ notes that the richest 1% of the world’s population captured over USD 26 trillion (nearly 63%) of the USD 42 trillion created since 2020, nearly twice the USD 16 trillion (37%) that went to the rest of the population.

Oxfam notes that the rate of the concentration of wealth has been faster in the first two years of the new decade than ever before. In the previous decade the super-rich had expropriated nearly 54% of the total wealth created.

People's Dispatch

Housewives and Downing Street by Joanna Bright (1935).

Tax Research UK
The origins of the ‘household analogy’
Richard Murphy | Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at City University, London; Director of Tax Research UK; non-executive director of Cambridge Econometrics, and a member of the Progressive Economy Forum

Departing showrunner Chris Chibnall is heading to LA to join Jodie Whittaker at Gallifrey One! Gallifrey One has always been a convention that celebrates the whole of Doctor Who, right from the 23rd of November 1963 to the present day. And the 33rd edition of the biggest Doctor Who convention in the world, happening in […]

The post Chris Chibnall is joining Jodie Whittaker at Gallifrey One! appeared first on Blogtor Who.

"Prince Andrew would make a great bin liner, for example"

There was a Financial Times article recently (January 8, 2023) – Monetary independence is overrated, and the euro is riding high – from Martin Sandbu which strained credibility and continues the long tradition of pro-Euro economists attempting to defend the indefensible – fixed exchange rate, common currency regimes. He claims that the Euro is a better system in the modern era for dealing with calamity than currency independence. However, as I explain below, none of his arguments provide the case for the superiority of the Eurozone against currency-issuing independence. Currency-issuing government can certainly introduce poor policy – often because the policy makers refuse to acknowledge their own capacity and think they have to act as if the nation doesn’t have its own currency. But the negative consequences that flow from testify to the poor quality of the polity rather than any disadvantages of the currency independence. The Euro Member States are being bailed out by the central bank and if that stopped the system would demonstrate the inherent dysfunction of its monetary architecture and nations would fail....

Bill Mitchell – billy blog

From the most powerful woman in the US Congress: That’s just beautiful.

The Liberal Party needs to be held accountable for its racist attitudes and scandals that largely get brushed aside. read now...

Protecting all workers from Covid infection isn't even on the table.

There was a time when I would have been all over this story when it happened because I was documenting taser use around the country and the world. To me this use of electro-shock to put people into compliance is nothing short of torture and sometimes, summary execution. But I was told by some experts, and criticized by activists, who said that while the dangers of tasers are horrific they are nothing when compared to the horror of police shootings so I backed off my little crusade after the Michael Brown shooting. But it’s still happening, particularly to people with mental health issues which is just heartbreaking. And there are times, like this, when it is deadly force: Videos released this week of a teacher who died after Los Angeles police discharged a Taser on him at least six times on a Venice street raise serious concerns about the officers’ tactics, law enforcement experts who reviewed the tapes said. The LAPD’s actions have sparked alarms from community activists as well as Mayor Karen Bass and are now the subject of an internal investigation.

Briefing to inform the Third Reading debate in the House of Commons on 17 January 2023 Unintended consequences of the Online Safety Bill mean a trio of surveillance, prior restraint of speech, and restriction on access to online content and services. The Bill seeks to protect children online, but its measures’ effect extends far beyond […]

Ingredients: 1 pound black beans1 small smoked beef tongue1 pound smoked and salted pork2 onions4 tomatoes1 tablespoon bacon fat2 small green hot peppers Instructions: In Brazil, this nourishing dish is almost always served with small grilled hot sausages. ©️Shufunotomo Co., Ltd., Japan, 1971 Published in the United States and Canada by BOBLEY PUBLISHING, a division […]

A Policy briefing Criminal liability for content harmful to children Amendment NC2 Sir William Cash and Miriam Cates Drafted by Dr Monica Horten – 16 Jan 2023 The Amendment is not about child protection. It is about content harmful to children, and restricting their access to it. The Amendment inserts a criminal liability into Section […]

One question for Paul Sutter, a theoretical cosmologist at Stony Brook University.

The post What Is Our Universe Expanding Into? appeared first on Nautilus.

Happy Martin Luther King Day to you. Or, if you come from a different faith tradition, happy Robert E. Lee’s birthday? Because this is a thing the state of Alabama apparently celebrates. I wish this was a joke, but it’s not: Confederate Memorial Day and Jefferson Davis’ Birthday are right around the corner. As noted in the original this surely proves there is no institutional racism, amirite?

I finished this audiobook last week, and I’m taking a few minutes to write down my thoughts before I forget them. It’s a hard thing to remember to do! The book is called Gangsters of Capitalism, by Jonathan M. Katz. Superficially, it’s a biography of the American Marine officer Smedley Butler, best known, I think, … Continue reading Gangsters of Capitalism →

As a nation Japan would not win many Nobel peace prizes. For centuries its pirates pillaged Chinese coastal towns. In the 19th century carve-up of China, Japan gained Taiwan, the Liaodong peninsula and later Manchuria. In 1910 it colonised Korea. In 1937 it began its attack into China proper, killing close to an estimated 20 million Continue reading »

The announcement this month by the Albanese government that Australia would be acquiring HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) batteries from the United States can be put down to a few factors. One is that sense of being left out of the club. If European states can have such launchers with seemingly devastating effect, why Continue reading »

George Pell was, by temperament and personality, about the worst possible choice to be made a bishop, then an archbishop, and ultimately a cardinal — one of the inner circle of the church entrusted with central church administration and the selection of new Popes. He was the wrong man for the times – if ever Continue reading »

Hannah Dickinson, an asylum lawyer from the Asylum Seeker Rights Centre, is reported in The Canberra Times to “have rubbished suggestions people are seizing on huge backlogs of asylum applications to lodge bogus claims for protection”. Yet in the same article, the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA) is reported to have said asylum “backlogs (have) Continue reading »

The nation is approaching a watershed decision. Are we brave enough to try and correct the wrongs of the past? The Voice. These two simple words have unleashed a manufactured storm. For me they set running a kaleidoscope of scenes: Captain Cook’s arrival The astonishment of the people already here Cook’s abandonment of his instructions Continue reading »

“The U.S. government believes that the only democratic institution in Venezuela is an assembly that has not met in seven years and whose term has expired,” writes Vijay Prashad, an Indian historian, editor and journalist in a recent article from Consortium News. Without a single word of dispute for Vijay’s presented view of the United Continue reading »

This piece by Peter Drier sums it up for those guys who want to appropriate King for their one single purpose: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was no moderate. Today, he is viewed as something of an American saint. His name adorns schools and street signs. His birthday January 15, 1929 – is observed as a national holiday on the third Monday of January each year. This year as in year’s past, Americans from across the political spectrum invoke King’s name to justify their beliefs and actions. But in his day, King was considered a dangerous troublemaker. Both Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson worried that King was being influenced by Communists. King was harassed by the FBI and vilified in the media. The establishment’s campaign to denigrate King worked. In August 1966 – as King was bringing his civil rights campaign to Northern cities to address poverty, slums, housing segregation and bank lending discrimination—the Gallup Poll found that 63% of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of King, compared with 33% who viewed him favorably. King called himself a democratic socialist.

These chickens save lives.

A new study reveals that both Israeli businesses and multinational corporations have been instrumental in helping Israel restrict water access to Palestinians and destroy Palestinian water infrastructure.

The post New Report Charges Major Corporations as Complicit in Israel’s Water Apartheid appeared first on MintPress News.