Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – January 28, 2024
by Tony Wikrent
Global power shift
Maersk ships in US Navy convoy forced to retreat under Houthi missile attack
[Trade Winds, via Naked Capitalism 01-26-2024]
Reading
This is a test, folks. We are going to see if the MAGA propaganda machine is strong enough to overcome reality for a majority of the people. Trump is saying out loud that he wants the border issue to enhance his election chances. There is no mistaking it. Meanwhile, some Republican members of the congress are saying that it’s a good deal and they should take it. That’s a very risky comment for him apparently: Here’s what Trump is ordering: Republican front-runner Donald Trump said he wants to be held responsible for blocking a bipartisan border security billin the works in the Senateas President Biden seeks emergency authority to rein in a record surge of unauthorized border crossings. “As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible open borders betrayal of America,” Trump told a rowdy crowd of supporters at a rally in Las Vegas on Saturday, ahead of the state’s presidential caucus on Feb. 8. “I’ll fight it all the way. A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s okay. Please blame it on me.
I know I’ve been doing a crap job of sharing updates or juicy blog posts. Sorry! Here are some varied updates. And hopefully I’ll pen a proper commentary shortly. I’m (hopefully) going to come back later this week with more thoughts on the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and what it takes to support young […]
Israel has for years been determined to cut aid to the refugees both in Gaza and the West Bank. While the UN Secretary General and head of UNRWA calls for an investigation into what Israel alleges are crimes committed by some 12 Gazan UNRWA staff (among the 13,000) in the participation of the October 7th Continue reading »
I doubt if any Australia political leader was watching the International Court of Justice President Judge, Joan E Donahue (United States of America) deliver the ruling in South Africa’s case alleging Israel has committed genocide on Palestinians in Gaza. The hour-long detailed assessment by Judge O Donahue should certainly be compulsory viewing for every Federal Continue reading »
Regularly, Western media claims that China’s run is near an end and that collapse is just around the corner. So constant has this become, it is like a broken gramophone record. Recently predictions of this collapse have been couched around the indebtedness of some major players in the Chinese property market. The ‘inevitable collapse’, however, Continue reading »
On February 20, Julian Assange, the daredevil publisher of WikiLeaks, will be going into battle, yet again, with the British justice system – or what counts for it. The UK High Court will hear arguments from his team that his extradition to the United States from Britain to face 18 charges under the Espionage Act Continue reading »
Michael Gawenda, former editor of The Age and Walkley award-winning journalist, published his memoir ‘My Life as a Jew’ last year. Actually, it’s only part memoir, since much of it is reserved for polemics against Jews and Gentiles who are critical of Israel. The rest traces his life journey from an anti-Zionist Bundist youth to Continue reading »
For some years Asian Americans have strongly favoured the Democratic Party with their votes. The main reasons for this were that when they came to America, they settled mostly in large cities run by the Democratic Party in Democrat states. The Democratic Party claimed them as minority people that were part of the Democratic coalition Continue reading »
Liberal democracy is facing its most perilous time since the rise of fascism a century ago. Between the Global Financial Crisis and now, the number of liberal democracies has fallen by a third, as the drift towards populist authoritarian leadership gathers pace. Two visceral emotions drive the affairs of democratic societies: hope and fear. Of Continue reading »
There can be no question of the National Security Law being repealed. Likewise, I imagine there is no question of your government repealing its National Security Act (2023). Dear Prime Minister, In re: Letter to Lord Patten of Barnes Greetings, from Hong Kong. I refer to your letter to Lord Patten of Barnes, dated January Continue reading »
Notwithstanding calls to divert supply lines from China this is not happening except for America. An Oxford Economics research report funded by the Hinrich Foundation made the following surprising discoveries: Asia’s supply chain trade is growing and diversifying, even as the US and China decouple; Decoupling remains largely a US-China phenomenon, and to a lesser Continue reading »
Late last year, a colleague sent me a letter decrying some of my writings about China, notably the last newsletter of 2023. This newsletter is my response to him. The situation in China is the cause of a great deal of consternation amongst the left. I am glad you have raised the issue of Chinese Continue reading »
Say it ain’t so! The Daily Beast with a scoop: Always read the footnotes. That’s where former federal judge Barbara Jones, the court-appointed special monitor in Donald Trump’s New York business fraud case, just planted a financial bombshell that legal experts say suggests Trump lied knowingly and repeatedly on his federal financial disclosures about a major loan that never existed—and may have evaded taxes on $48 million in income. The detail came in a letter Jones filed on Friday to update New York Judge Arthur F. Engoron, first reported by The Messenger, on her efforts to get a full and clear accounting of the Trump Organization’s assets. The letter claims, yet again, that Trump and his company have filed statements containing inconsistencies and errors, but have been “cooperative” in the review process. But Jones tucked a major revelation into footnote 6, writing that a massive chunk of debt Trump has claimed to owe one of his own companies for years apparently does not exist, and never did.
Lincoln: “repulse them, or they will subjugate us” “The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” Faulkner wrote in 1951. “Old times there are not forgotten,” wrote Daniel Decatur Emmett in “Dixie” a century earlier in 1859. “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” wrote somebody, but not likely Mark Twain. We’ll come back to harbingers of re-appearing tyranny in a minute. Republicans in Missouri want to bring back “old time” dueling: Sen. Nick Schroer (R-St. Charles County) is listed on the proposal, notes Fox 2 St.
From more Boeing revelations to fossil fuel propaganda in schools, here’s all news from The Lever this week.
The world’s best recovery and a silent revolution In an economics column headlined, “Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery,” David Lynch (no, not that one) writes in the Washington Post: Here, despite lingering consumer angst over inflation, the surprisingly strong economy is outperforming all of its major trading partners. Since 2020, the United States has powered through a once-in-a-century pandemic, the highest inflation in 40 years and fallout from two foreign wars. Now, after posting faster annual growth last year than in 2022, the U.S. economy is quashing fears of a new recession while offering lessons for future crisis-fighting. “The U.S. has really come out of this into a place of strength and is moving forward like covid never happened,” said Claudia Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist who now runs an eponymous consulting firm. “We earned this; it wasn’t just a fluke.” It was no accident: On Friday, President Biden hailed fresh government data showing that annual inflation over the second half of 2023 fell back to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.
In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: WWE Royal Rumble, MOTU: Revolution, SNL, True Detective: Night Country, Daredevil, Doctor Who, and more!
Ron DeSantis still opposes recreational cannabis, but his handpicked Supreme Court justices are coming around.
The post Major Florida GOP Donors Stand to Make Windfall Profits If Recreational Cannabis Is Legalized appeared first on The Intercept.
The strapping young man in the photo above is my grandfather Philip Kramer (in his late teens or early twenties, to my best estimation). He immigrated to America from Bialystok circa 1910. While the area is now part of the Republic of Poland, Bialystok “belonged” to the Russian Empire when he lived there (ergo, he was fluent in Russian, Polish, and Yiddish). One of the reasons his family emigrated was to flee the state terror inflicted on Russia’s Jewish population by Czar Nicholas (the Bialystok pogram of 1906 was particularly nasty). I suppose I have Czar Nicholas to thank for my existence. If my grandfather had never left Bialystok, he never would have met New York City born-and-raised Celia Mogerman (the daughter of Jewish German immigrants). Consequently, they never would have fallen in love, got married, and had their daughter Lillian, who never would have met and fallen in love with a young G.I. named Robert Hartley (a W.A.S.P. farm boy from Ohio) at a New York City U.S.O. Club. They, in turn, produced…me (otherwise, you’d just be staring at a blank page here).
