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Created
Wed, 19/03/2025 - 07:18

While global politics reckons with a broken ceasefire in Palestine, attention is again on exerting pressure via the long-term boycott campaigns targeting Israel. This issue has become especially fraught in the world of football, where campaigners such as the Democracy in Europe movement 2025 and FairSquare have been building pressure for institutions like UEFA and […]

Created
Wed, 19/03/2025 - 04:00

Dear Board of Trustees,

As professors at this large state university, we want to thank you for your recent investment in athletics. We admit, when we first heard that you were spending $50 million to replace our washed-up, elderly football coach with a washed-up, elderly, unemployed NFL coach, we were skeptical. But now we see the error of our ways. During this era of declining enrollment, public mistrust, and open attacks by the US government, it’s clear that only one thing can save this institution, the country’s oldest public university: college football.

We are grateful that, through this mega-contract with a coach with zero collegiate experience, the university is publicly recognizing what we’ve known for years: Our mission is not to prepare America’s youth for successful careers; it’s to make money on football. Now, we’ll finally be able to maximize profit through ad revenue, ticket sales, and selling overpriced beer to drunk fans. Just like the NFL, but with fewer Taylor Swift sightings.

Created
Wed, 19/03/2025 - 02:58
The German parliament today, after heated debate, approved the much discussed debt package worth hundreds of billions of euros for defence and infrastructure. With the necessary two-thirds majority, the parliament in Berlin passed a constitutional amendment allowing defence and security expenditures to be exempt from the Schuldenbremse (debt brake). The previously strict debt rules for […]
Created
Wed, 19/03/2025 - 00:28

Alex Karp, the CEO of the controversial military tech firm Palantir, is the coauthor of a new book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. In it, he calls for a renewed sense of national purpose and even greater cooperation between government and the tech sector. His book is, in fact, not just an account of how to spur technological innovation, but a distinctly ideological tract. As a start, Karp roundly criticizes Silicon Valley’s focus on consumer-oriented products and events like video-sharing apps, online shopping, and social media platforms, which he dismisses as “the narrow and the trivial.” His focus instead is on what he likes to think of as innovative big-tech projects of... Read more

Source: The New Age Militarists appeared first on TomDispatch.com.

Created
Tue, 18/03/2025 - 23:45
Extraordinary Rendition Comes Home To America

Oh hey:

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.

“But they’re bad people, Ian” you squeal. “They’re gang members. Bad things should happen to them because they’re bad!”

Well, maybe.

Created
Tue, 18/03/2025 - 23:00

Whenever you open Instagram or TikTok, you’ve probably seen Mark Wahlberg jumping in an ice bath at 4 a.m. or squeezing in a third set of bicep curls in the dead of night. What you don’t see is us coaching him behind the camera, because we are Mark Wahlberg’s phalanx of personal trainers, and we are pretty much just fucking with him at this point.

- - -

Messing with Mark Wahlberg is easy and fun because Mark Wahlberg will do anything we tell him to.

“Jump into this dumpster filled with rocks and soy sauce,” we say.

“It will make me strong?” Mark Wahlberg looks up at us with wide eyes and a wet nose.

“Yes, Mark Wahlberg,” we chuckle. “Soy sauce is made of salt. Salt makes you powerful.”

“Slow down,” Mark Wahlberg screams. “Facts make the top of my body hurt! They make the top of my body hurt so bad!”

Created
Tue, 18/03/2025 - 22:04
18th of March 2025 My Lords, last Thursday, the noble Lord, Lord Howell, asked the House to take note of the UK’s international position. My purpose today is narrower but more urgent; to ask the Government what their Ukraine policy now is. It is urgent because the Trump Administration have torn up the familiar script. … Continue reading Lord Skidelsky to ask His Majesty’s Government what is their policy with regard to the Ukraine war following the new policy of the government of the United States of America.
Created
Tue, 18/03/2025 - 20:18

When the powerful punish the principled, we glimpse the unmasked face of empire. Donald Trump’s vindictive executive order denying aid to South Africa — punishment for its support of Palestine and pursuit of land reform — offers precisely such a moment of clarity.  The contours of our new global struggle are now etched with brutal […]

The post Stand with South Africa against Trump’s wrath – Globe&Mail op-ed appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

Created
Tue, 18/03/2025 - 19:58
Vad det förflutna lär oss är att människan gång på gång ställs inför beslut som är avgörande för framtiden. Genom dessa ställningstaganden sker inriktningen av vårt samhällsbygge. Grunden till vårt välfärdssamhälle har lagts av många människors tålmodiga arbete. I det forna Egypten byggde man pyramiderna. Vi har byggt ett samhälle som — visserligen med  kvarstående […]
Created
Tue, 18/03/2025 - 19:10
This is an important and fundamentally correct critique of the core methodology of economics: individualistic; analytical; ahistorical; asocial; and apolitical. What economics understands is important. What it ignores is, alas, equally important. As Skidelsky, famous as the biographer of Keynes, notes, “to maintain that market competition is a self-sufficient ordering principle is wrong. Markets are […]