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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – December 21, 2025 by Tony Wikrent   Strategic Political Economy The $79 Trillion Heist Harold Meyerson, December 03, 2025 [The American Prospect] …As Emma Janssen has reported in these pages, marketers are going where the money is, like bank robber Willie Sutton. First-class and business-seat travel on the airlines is […]

The democratic risks of our housing crisis, the big AI short, and more from The Lever this week.

Al premiar con su premio de la paz a la figura favorita de Trump de la oposición venezolana, la conspiradora golpista y proguerra María Corina Machado, el Comité Nobel desobedeció los principios entronizados en sus documentos fundacionales, así como la ley sueca, alega Julian Assange en un escrito legal explosivo revisado por The Grayzone. El gobierno sueco violó sus propias leyes al concederle el Premio Nobel de la Paz a María Corina Machado, según un escrito legal explosivo introducido por […]

The post Julian Assange: Suecia violó sus propias leyes al darle el Nobel de la Paz a María Corina Machado first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Julian Assange: Suecia violó sus propias leyes al darle el Nobel de la Paz a María Corina Machado appeared first on The Grayzone.

Collective bargaining is unbanned, a rideshare giant gets sued, a new player takes on surveillance pricing, and water runs free.

Use to discuss topics unrelated to recent posts.

Mitt Romney’s reversal on taxes comes only after he's given up the power to fix the problem he fortified.

“Why, for fifty-three years, I’ve put up with it now! I MUST stop this Christmas from coming! But HOW?” — Dr. Seuss, How the Grinch Stole Christmas

1. He’s roughly fifty-three years old, give or take.

2. Unlike the music from his day, he thinks everything the youth are listening to is just a bunch of noise, noise, noise, NOISE.

3. Anticommercialist. Every year, he makes the same cynical comments about Christmas.

4. He’s used to being culturally excluded, forgotten, and ignored. But he doesn’t care.

5. Deep contempt for groupthink and is suspicious of the motivations of people, corporations, and the government.

6. He was a latch-key kid and still thrives with lots of alone time.

7. Definitely got some sort of heart trouble. You can tell by looking at him.

8. He wears his apathy as armor because he’s emotionally ill-equipped to handle the earnest sentimentality that comes with the holiday season.

9. His awkward presence could be described as “lurking.”

New polling suggests a progressive majority could come back to Labour if the PM embraces a more compassionate form of politics, argues Jennifer Nadel

Indiegogo is withholding $51,000 in reader donations to MintPress News after we published investigations into US war crimes, Israeli intelligence influence, and Silicon Valley’s role in modern warfare.

The post Indiegogo Withholds $51K In Donations From MintPress in Financial Censorship Crackdown appeared first on MintPress News.

FEATURES:

- Ossuary jars
- Anti-revolutionary painting
- Toxic dust
- Solastalgia

It was a cold, dry night in April, and a crowd had gathered in the center of Nukus, the capital of the Central Asian Republic of Karakalpakstan, to squint through a skein of toxic dust into the illuminated lobby of one of the world’s most peculiar cultural institutions: the Nukus Museum of Art.

Overall, you’ve got a strong concept: a log burning in a fireplace, on a loop for five hours. But we have a few notes.

• Can the log be more aspirational?
• Focus-group it to see if kids aged six to eleven think fire is too urban.
• The log seems passive. Provide more backstory.
• Can the fireplace have a cool sidekick? (e.g., a smart-mouthed pinecone.)
• Does the music have to be Christmas music?
• Will viewers know what a fireplace is?
• Make the fire more appealing to single men.
• Where’s the merchandising tie-in?
• Could the fire sing a duet with Michael Bublé?
• Instead of a holiday one-off, could it be a weekly series? (e.g., Jake Log is an ex-cop turned P.I. who plays by his own rules.)
• Why fire?

Otherwise, it’s perfect.

Happy Holidays!

In Get In, the first major account of Keir Starmer’s steady takeover of the Labour Party, journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund describe a scene from one of Starmerism’s major tactical victories over the party’s left: a hastily introduced a motion at 2021’s party conference that would double the threshold of nominations for MPs to make […]

Keir Starmer's decision to exclude Russian interference in the 2016 EU referendum from his inquiry into foreign interference in our elections should ring alarm bells, argues Sergei Cristo

Of all the headlines and debacles that accompanied November’s Budget, a helping hand for one particular sector failed to materialise: arts and culture. The industry was not directly in the firing line of spending cuts, but it is a victim of continued state-managed neglect, as it has been slowly fed into the maw of the […]

Test your knowledge of meatpacker price-fixing, revolutionary political philosophy, and other issues that really matter.

A friend of mine once used the metaphor of “The Lords of Hell” to describe most of the world. There are a few people with lots of money and power, a few billion people who live in constant fear of not having enough, and a billion or so who don’t have enough. There is more […]

“President Donald Trump on Wednesday assailed his White House predecessors for not pushing back against Venezuela earlier and stated that his intention is ‘getting land, oil rights, whatever we had’ returned by the government in Caracas.” — PBS

I’m absolutely disgusted by President Trump’s attempt to start a war with Venezuela without first putting in the years of tedious, brain-breaking propaganda work. Is it fun to poison the public consciousness with outrageous lies that border on blood libel and dehumanize innocent civilians in a country that most Americans couldn’t even find on a map? Of course not. But it’s what you do! Past presidents used to understand that. Past presidents used to care.

Ministers have so far refused demands to negotiate with the hunger strikers, as the risk of them dying in prison increases

British academic and his Nigerian wife repeatedly stopped from hosting family members, including at their own wedding, due to visa restrictions brought in by Keir Starmer's Government

Kate McCallister realizes that her son Kevin didn’t make it with them to the airport on their way to Paris for the holidays. She frantically pulls out her phone and calls him up.

KEVIN: Hello?

MOM: Kevin!

KEVIN: Mom?

MOM: I’m so sorry you’re home alone! Your sister accidentally took your jacket that had your AirTag in the pocket, and we were too busy listening to Audible to notice you were missing.

KEVIN: I feel so alone!

MOM: I know, sweetie! We just got to the airport, but we can catch a later flight. We might not get Delta One, alas, but that’s okay. Motion sensors say you’re in my bedroom.

KEVIN: I’m hiding under your bed.

WM just announced “outsized shareholder returns” after admitting its higher prices may be driving customers away.

The privilege of describing new species is skewed to Global Northerners

The post Parachute Science Continues to Prevail in Global South Biodiversity Studies appeared first on Nautilus.

Prominent computer chip part maker Micron is abandoning its consumer-side business in favor of artificial intelligence, enabling its competitors to raise prices.

The Senate approved the 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) yesterday, authorizing nearly $900 billion...