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Created
Tue, 18/04/2023 - 04:00
Some things never change Kevin McCarthy went to Wall Street to unveil his debt ceiling plan: stick it to the poor. How perfect: On Monday, the speaker delivered remarks at the New York Stock Exchange on the pressing issue facing Congress: raising the debt ceiling and ensuring the US can avoid a catastrophic default that could happen as soon as July. After months of stalemate, and Biden remaining adamant that he will not use the debt ceiling as bargaining chip, McCarthy confirmed that the House will vote on a bill “in the coming weeks” that would raise the debt ceiling through next year while keeping federal spending at the 2022 level over the next decade.  Part of that deal would include strengthened work requirements on welfare programs, like the food stamps program called SNAP. “Our proposal will also restore work requirements that ensure able-bodied adults without dependents earn a paycheck and learn new skills that will grow our economy and help the supply chain,” McCarthy said. “Right now, there are more job openings than people who are looking for jobs. You know why?
Created
Tue, 18/04/2023 - 02:30
Here we go again. It seems as if every other election cycle or so for the past few decades has produced dreams of a centrist third party “unity” ticket that would appeal to all the Americans who say they want the partisan bickering in Washington to stop. The Beltway media gets excited at the idea of “the grown-ups” being in charge and the Big Money Boys lick their chops at the prospect of a party based entirely on their needs and their needs alone. This year it looks like the perennial group that calls itself No Labels has decided to throw a monkey wrench into our closely divided electoral college map and possibly send Donald Trump back to the White House in 2024 — in the name of unity, of course. No Labels is already gathering signatures to get on the ballot and is trying to recruit a Democrat and a Republican to run as a bipartisan ticket. Joe Manchin D-W.V., Kirsten Sinema, D-Az., Susan Collins, R-Me., and former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan are the names mentioned most often.
Created
Tue, 18/04/2023 - 00:47

In the year since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the discussions of what this violence might mean for the future of Russian culture have generated more heat than light. Ukrainian interventions in the debate, however, equipped as they are with an intimate knowledge of both Russian civilisation and Russian barbarism, have tended to be more […]

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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 00:30
So long as victims are nonwhite “I thought I understood gun culture. But I didn’t,” writes John DeVore at Medium. It took a while to sink in, DeVore explains. Today he just feels naive. “It’s not about liberty or personal protection. It’s certainly not about tyranny. It’s about control. Strength. Boots, smashing faces.” The Republican Party — once the party of business and law and order — now exists to fight for a future where white heterosexual Christians are firmly in charge of American society. And they will fight dirty if they have to. Because “they” are coming for you, “the liberals, the Blacks, the Jews. The drag queens want to steal your children. Have you bought a gun today?” The valorization of Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Perry was deeply unsettling for DeVore. But Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott’s intentions on pardoning Perry (allegedly spurred on by Fox News host Tucker Carlson) was DeVore’s “ah-ha moment.” Perry was convicted this month of murdering a Black Lives Matter supporter.
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 00:18
Hélène Landemore enthusiastically shared a piece, “The Inflation of Concepts,” published at Aeon by John Tasioulas (who she describes as her “Oxford colleague”). Appealing to the work of Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls, Tasioulas focuses on a “threat to the quality of public reason” (which he claims) “tends to go unnoticed. This is the degradation of the core ideas mobilised in […]
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Tue, 18/04/2023 - 00:06
The Teixeira Documents Are Being Kept Secret By Media

So, back when the DNC was hacked and documents were leaked showing that the DNC had been helping Clinton and kneecapping Sanders, I found it interesting that most of the media focused on “the Russians did it!” rather than on the content of the leak, which was, after all, in the public interest to know.

The same thing is going on with the Texeira documents. WSWS has a particularly good article on this:

While about 60 or so documents have been made public so far, US media outlets indicate they have access to far more.  The Washington Post reported Thursday, “The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public.”

Created
Mon, 17/04/2023 - 23:40
In science, courage is to follow the motto of enlightenment and Kant’s dictum — Sapere Aude!  To use your own understanding, having the ​courage to think for yourself and question ‘received opinion,’ authority, or orthodoxy. In our daily lives, courage is the capability to confront fear, as when in front of the powerful and mighty, not […]
Created
Mon, 17/04/2023 - 23:00
Cruelty is the point again Remember André Bauer? He was the South Carolina lieutenant governor (Republican, naturally) who in 2010 compared government food assistance to the poor to feeding stray animals: “My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals,” Bauer said during a town hall meeting, as the Greenville News reported over the weekend. “You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.” Bauer was saying the quiet part out loud before MAGA made it “conservative cool.” Cutting off poor people’s food is “a perennial Republican target,” observes Politicos’ Meredith Lee Hill.
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Mon, 17/04/2023 - 22:49

The more successful BRICS becomes the weaker Western hegemony over the South will grow. Though some Western politicians and media insist on downplaying BRICS’ role in shaping the new world order, the change seems to be real and irreversible.   

The post The Rise of the Global South: Can BRICS Triumph Over the IMF and World Bank? appeared first on MintPress News.

Created
Mon, 17/04/2023 - 22:26

In this hour-long interview, former Green Party presidential candidate David Cobb discusses radical politics, community organizing, sustainable development, climate change, racial justice, the protests in France, indigenous sovereignty, and building power to confront the ruling class.

The post Imagining A World Beyond Capitalism, with David Cobb appeared first on MintPress News.

Created
Mon, 17/04/2023 - 22:05

A kid texts their mother during a school lockdown.

KID: Mom, a drag queen broke into our school. I love you so much.

MOM: What!? Are you sure it’s real?

KID: Yes, we’re under lockdown now. We barricaded the door and I’m hiding under my desk. Mom, I’m so scared.

MOM: Can you call me? Are you safe?

KID: I can only text. We have to be quiet. They feed off the prepubescent voices of young white boys.

MOM: Okay, honey, stay calm. Remember what you learned in drag lockdown training. It will do whatever it can to lure you with its bronze silicone breasts and brainwash you.

KID: I can hear its stilettos clicking down the hallway. I think it’s close to our classroom…

MOM: Stay completely still, honey. Breathe. Cover your genitals.

KID: There are so many sequins! I can see them reflecting onto the walls.

Created
Mon, 17/04/2023 - 22:04

Asa Winstanley joins Lowkey to discuss the ongoing protests in Israel, UK Spying on Palestinian Refugees and his new book, "Weaponising Anti-Semitism: How the Israel Lobby Took Down Jeremy Corbyn."

The post Israel Protests and UK Spying on Palestinian Refugees, with Asa Winstanley appeared first on MintPress News.