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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 08:14
Disputes with train operating companies continue, but RMT solidarity brings big win while managements of some other unions undermine their members Mick Lynch’s RMT union has won a major victory – and a significant pay-rise – for members working in Network Rail. 76% of members on a 90% turnout voted to accept an improved offer […]
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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 07:10
It should be obvious to just about anyone by now that transnational capitalism cannot survive in its present form if humanity is to survive. The amount of negative externality that is not priced in is too great. Markets are not a mechanism that delivers accurate economic calculation, contrary to what Hayek argued in his Nobel Prize Lecture (1974), and is now widely accepted as received wisdom. Valuation is biased by failing to consider true cost and reliance on this is leading to more erroneous assumptions about addressing emergent challenges. 
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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 06:00

Capitalism has its capacity to reinvent itself and not only survive the many crises it has caused but transform itself into more aggressive forms over the years. This has prompted many authors to query the possibility of its collapse and at what point this event may occur. More importantly, how will this system of appropriation and accumulation that the world has got used to finally unravel? It is a timely question when the availability, accessibility and affordability of basic and essential human needs such as staple foods are being impacted by the dilapidated state of governments, economy, and ecology under the capitalist system. One explanation offered by William I. Robinson has come at a time when the world is at an intersection of many crises on multiple fronts: health, environment, economy, and escalating geopolitical tensions. Robinsons’ latest book Can Global Capitalism Endure? was published in 2022 by Clarity Press as the world just experienced the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ripple effects of war between Ukraine and Russia and the escalating wrath of climate change.

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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 06:00
DeSantis gave a back-handed statement this morning in which he repeatedly used the words hush money payments to a porn star” repeatedly. (The video is in a post below.) Trump isn’t happy about it Did he just hint that Ron DeSantis molested young men when he was a high school teacher? Lol. It’s going to be a long campaign. His meltdown is impressive. This is just from the last 48 hours. And it’s not all of them: Let it sink in once again that this man is the leader of the Republican Party, was president of the United States and has a decent chance of becoming president again. And he is certifiably nuts. But then, so are his fans:
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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 06:00
A new book by economist Richard McGahey examines the country’s anti-urban structure and ideology, offering insights on how American cities can thrive.

Cities. They’re the places where most Americans live, work and play, but skeptics say they aren’t the “real America.” They drive economic growth, but rarely reap the full benefits of what they generate. Cities are places of opportunity and innovation but saddled with neglectful, if not downright harmful policies. Thomas Jefferson called cities “pestilential to the morals, the health, and the liberties of man.” Donald Trump, a lifelong New Yorker, referred to Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent-infested mess,” Atlanta as “in horrible shape and falling apart” and inner cities across the country as “burning and crime infested.”

Why all the hate?

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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 05:38
From the FrameLab Newsletter with Dr. George Lakoff and Gil Duran: “Woke” has quickly become the most ubiquitous weapon word in American politics. Republicans use the term as a pejorative term to describe Democratic or progressive policies in general. Increasingly, everything Republicans don’t like gets described as woke, and wokeness has become the scapegoat for any bad […]
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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 05:07

Tucker Carlson accused the NSA of spying on his personal communications when he tried to schedule an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I can corroborate his story. On March 10, Fox News host Tucker Carlson told the Full Send podcast that the US government “broke into [his] text messages” in the summer of 2021, just months before the launch of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Carlson claimed the spying occurred as he was planning a trip to Russia, […]

The post I am the “US-based Kremlin intermediary” that tried to help Tucker Carlson book an interview with Putin appeared first on The Grayzone.

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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 04:58
It’s Parliament House, Canberra, on a Sunday afternoon. There is a meeting of the national security committee of cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, about a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, where the US and China are in air and naval combat. There’s an inflection point when someone – a minister or the PM Continue reading »
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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 04:55
The International Criminal Court’s conduct in the Ukraine-Russia conflict, characterised by unusual alacrity for an international legal institution, is in stark contrast to the feet dragging on alleged war crimes by Israel against the Palestinians in 2014. The Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Karim Khan has injected himself into the Ukraine-Russia conflict Continue reading »
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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 04:54
In February 2023, the number of asylum cases in Australia for the first time exceeded 100,000. Despite the intense attention on boat arrivals for the last decade, note that very few of these 100,000 asylum cases are boat arrivals. The bulk arrived during an intense period of labour trafficking of Malaysian and Chinese nationals from Continue reading »
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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 04:52
At this stage there is little interest in how to dispose of the high level uranium waste from AUKUS SSNs, let alone put First Nations voices to the fore. This is unlikely to change while the nation’s most prominent journalists see it as their job to promote the dominant military doctrine and boost the demonisation Continue reading »
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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 04:51
HERE WE STAND: We are standing here, as people were in Melbourne yesterday, to recall one of Australia’s worst days: the start of our first war of aggression. We joined a small coalition to invade Iraq. We left that country in physical, social, economic and political ruin. No Australian government has inquired into why we Continue reading »
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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 04:50
The New York Times report of 8th March that ‘Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say’ elicited two sets of responses. The mainstream US media dutifully replicated the story without curiosity or challenge, carefully sidestepping questions of plausibility or context, and often, as with the Washington Post, managing to avoid mentioning the name Continue reading »
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Tue, 21/03/2023 - 04:30
The press got so excited Those who were following politics 20 years ago surely remember how the media reacted to the invasion of Iraq. I’ve never seen them so stimulated. Here’s what I wrote on this day in 2003: Resistance Is Futile The United States knows all and sees all. Schwartzkopf said he’s never seen anything like this “awesome” technology. The BBC said “it’s as if the US has a 3 dimensional picture of every single thing that is happening in Baghdad.” No need to tell the Brits about the strike, though. Gotta move fast. They may represent 70% of the coalition ‘o the willin’, but Blair is still a limey twit, always making Bush sound stupid. Killing Saddam’s like swatting a fly. We have X-Ray vision and he’s probably dead. We think. Like Osama. Oh wait. We got to watch Bush putting on his make-up on the BBC feed for about 5 minutes before the speech. He looked psyched.