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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – June 16 2024

by Tony Wikrent

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Strategic Political Economy

‘The whole supply chain is subsidised’: inside the EU’s blockbuster Chinese EV probe 

[South China Morning Post, via Naked Capitalism 06-13-2024]

…the tariff percentages the EU would slap on electric vehicle imports from China landed with a bang.

Along with preview images for Doctor Who Season 1 finale "Empire of Death," Susan Twist offers some insights into her mysterious characters.

The only thing Trump gets in return is destruction of America’s alliances a nuclear arms race and possibly Europe. Win-win for both parties I guess: Former U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday blasted the scale of U.S. support for Ukraine and said that if he is reelected in November he would immediately “have that settled.” At a campaign rally in Detroit, Trump criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, calling him “the greatest salesman of all time” for Kyiv’s push to secure U.S. support in its effort to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression more than three years after Moscow’s all-out invasion. “He just left four days ago with $60 billion, and he gets home, and he announces that he needs another $60 billion. It never ends,” Trump said. “I will have that settled prior to taking the White House as president-elect,” said Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee in the U.S. election. Trump said again the other day that he would also have secured the release of Evan Gerskovich as president-elect.

“imagine if Biden did it” That wasn’t all. He did his weird schtick about shower heads too: At least he doesn’t have a stiff gait because that would be a deal breaker.

The kitchen table is on fire Lewis Rothschild : People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone.  Donald Trump steps up to the microphone a lot. But to Americans too busy to listen, too overworked to devote their precious free time to political news, they hear only the loudest voices and feel how the world feels. To them. They’ll be asked this fall to hire leaders. From the president on down to the local school board. What they want in their leaders are people who will fight for them. It’s not just what you say. Words are cheap. It’s what you do. And voters need to see you doing it. Anat Shenker-Osorio had a long essay in Rolling Stone yesterday, not so much about messaging (her specialty) but about voter attitudes she sees in her focus groups: If my colleagues and I took a shot everytime someone in these groups decried the Democrats as doing nothing on the fascism front, we’d have cirrhosis. As one disaffected Democratic white woman from Arizona said in April, “I don’t think any of them care really.

Startups are losing track of your money and more from The Lever this week.

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Doctor Who fans are STILL craving a UNIT spinoff series - but has UNIT ever REALLY saved the day or are they always the show's "redshirts"?

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Doctor Who, TWD: Daryl Dixon - The Book of Carol, Charles Barkley, Kate Middleton, The X-Files, and more!

A few years ago, Howard Jacobson and I were joined by Xiaolu Guo for an online panel discussion at the Willesden Jewish Cemetary. We were there to speak on the subject of ‘Death, The City and a Sense of Place’. I remember we all agreed to meet questions about the ‘writing process’ with refusal. How […]

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

New York City’s 2024 Tribeca Film Festival is running through June 16th. The festival (co-founded by Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, and Craig Hatkoff in 2001) features a variety of media platforms, including film, TV, music, audio storytelling, games, and XR. I’m doing virtual coverage; as much as I’d love to be skipping down the streets of my birth city (well…technically Queens), physical mobility issues have made travel too uncomfortable. At any rate, I’ll be sharing reviews over the next couple weeks. The good news is that you can virtually attend as well-the festival is offering select titles via the “Tribeca at Home” online portal. Check out the website for more info. Let’s dive in! Brats (U.S.) *** – Linndrums,  teen angst, and synths…oh my! If you are of a certain age, you may recall a distinctive sub-genre of of films that propagated in the early-to-mid 80s.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Two additional previews for BBC and Disney+'s Doctor Who Season 1 finale "Empire of Death" adds another question into the conversation.

“You’re always building models. Stone circles. Cathedrals. Pipe-organs. Adding machines. I got no idea why I’m here now, you know that? But if the run goes off tonight, you’ll have finally managed the real thing.” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “That’s ‘you’ in the collective. Your species.” — William Gibson, Neuromancer Sometime in […]

I have mentioned this before but I want to put it out there again in case some of you missed it. This issue in The New Republic on what an American fascism would look like is a must read. It’s worth the subscription. Here’s an excerpt of editor Michael Tomasky’s intro which begins by noting that there is a lot of reluctance in our political discourse to draw this comparison as if it’s hysterical to acknowledge the threat: We have trouble seeing the hysteria. We chose the cover image, based on a well-known 1932 Hitler campaign poster, for a precise reason: that anyone transported back to 1932 Germany could very, very easily have explained away Herr Hitler’s excesses and been persuaded that his critics were going overboard. After all, he spent 1932 campaigning, negotiating, doing interviews—being a mostly normal politician. But he and his people vowed all along that they would use the tools of democracy to destroy it, and it was only after he was given power that Germany saw his movement’s full face. Today, we at The New Republic think we can spend this election year in one of two ways.

US House races. When asked about their House district race, likely voters choose the Democratic over the Republican candidate by a wide margin (62% to 36%). In the 10 competitive districts (as defined by the Cook Political Report), support is higher for the Democratic candidate than for the Republican (59% to 39%). Nine in ten or more Democratic and Republican likely voters would choose their party’s candidate, while independents are more divided. Across demographic groups and in the coastal regions, majorities favor the Democratic candidate over the Republican. Preferences in the US House race were similar in April (60% Democrat, 38% Republican). Thirty percent of likely voters are “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting for Congress this year. Fewer than four in ten across parties, regions, and demographic groups hold this view. In the competitive House races, 37 percent are “extremely” or “very” enthusiastic about voting for Congress this year. Congressman Ted Lieu tweeted this out saying that Democrats are going to flip the House . If this holds up they may very well.

Along with a preview for the Doctor Who S01 finale, "Empire of Death," Russell T. Davies drops a big clue about Sian Clifford's "Kind Woman."

The Dems are playing Axios reports: The desperate scramble by Republicans to rationalize what he said tells the whole story. They know that Wisconsin is key. And they are freaking out about Trump insulting the state like this, especially since theb local news was all over it across the state: “He was talking about how terrible crime and voter fraud are,” said campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung. In another statement, the campaign wrote that it was a “total lie” that Trump called Milwaukee a “horrible city.” However, they went on to add, “President Trump was explicitly referring to the problems in Milwaukee, specifically violent crime and voter fraud,” suggesting he did make comments about the city, just not in the way some were interpreting it. The campaign then includes a series of tweets from Republican members from Wisconsin inside the room who agree with the campaign’s description that Trump was not making a blanket disparaging statement about the city.

This year, as the world celebrated the holiday season, my Palestinian Christian community in Sydney, and elsewhere, experienced profound bereavement and fear, a sentiment shared by our Muslim and Jewish siblings. This year, I wondered for the first time, if my people’s culture, that of the Palestinian Christians, continuous since Jesus of Nazareth walked our Continue reading »

The temperature is rising and the world is getting increasingly dangerous, even the rich bits. Former Tuvalu PM slams Australia’s climate policies. Rights of and around rivers. All of the last 12 months were the hottest on record The graph below shows the average global temperature increase above the pre-industrial level (1850-1900) for each month, Continue reading »