Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – October 22, 2023
by Tony Wikrent
Strategic Political Economy
Deb Chachra’s ‘How Infrastructure Works’
Cory Doctorow [Pluralistic, via Naked Capitalism Water Cooler 10-18-2023]
Reading
After China entered the period of “reform and openness” in the 1980s, Western liberalism, embracing a form of ‘apocalyptic modernity’, adhered to the fantasy that China “would become like us.” What it meant in fact was that China “would become like us but be subservient to us”. If China was not going to “become like Continue reading »
Facts about the Israel/Palestine conflict have always been hard to come by. Some Israeli leaders are now telling more lies than many of their citizens, and former friends of Israel, can swallow. Yet Western governments still do. Inexact figures of dead, injured, and held hostage leave no doubt that in October, Israel intended its revenge Continue reading »
In a recent Q and A, the opposition’s shadow minister for Climate Change and Energy Ted O’Brien’s improbable aim was to convince Australia that small nuclear reactors (SMRs) could replace our coal fired power plants and lead us to carbon neutrality. If you examine the economics of SMRs the proposition has to be classified as Continue reading »
The past few months, as Australia debated the Voice proposal, have been incredibly challenging for First Peoples. Now we must find ways to move forward together. The work of the Yoorrook Justice Commission is more important than ever. Yoorrook is investigating the impact colonisation has had and continues to have on First Peoples in Victoria. Continue reading »
Post-Referendum attention has turned to the need for Truth-telling about our history. As Chair of the Council of the Australian War Memorial, Kim Beazley has a unique opportunity to grasp Truth-telling about the Australian Frontier Wars as a central theme for the Memorial in future. Michelle Grattan of The Conversation had a long podcast interview this week with Kim Continue reading »
Australia began its National Carers Week (15-21 October), poignantly, the very day after the nation voted ‘No’ to a way forward to giving Voice to their communities, which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had asked for in the Uluṟu Statement from the Heart. This result continues a sad record of voters preferring paternalism and Continue reading »
President Joe Biden last June showed his ignorance and arrogance to the world, when he called President Xi Jinping a dictator. Apparently he does not realise the weight of his remark. As the leader of the world’s most powerful country, President Biden should understand that the responsibility of a leader must be to serve the Continue reading »
The meeting of the Group of 77 developing countries (G77) plus China, held last month, 15-16 September in Havana, Cuba, passed with little note from our mainstream media, despite being attended by more than 100 countries, with thirty-one heads of state and 12 vice presidents present. That such should pass largely unnoticed by them however, Continue reading »
McCarthy: This is embarrassing for the Republican Party. It’s embarrassing for the nation pic.twitter.com/Mv8fc4PvoR — Acyn (@Acyn) October 22, 2023 EJ Dionne: The chaotic Republican-led House of Representatives has a rather poor sense of timing. The United States is in the midst of two international emergencies and faces the threat of a government shutdown next month. President Biden’s prime-time speech on Thursday pressing for aid to Ukraine and Israel underscored the exorbitant costs of the GOP meltdown. But the embarrassing exercise could prove to be a blessing because it’s exposing a crisis in our politics that must be confronted. The endless battle for the speakership is already encouraging new thinking and might yet lead to institutional arrangements to allow bipartisan majorities to work their will. The House impasse was precipitated by both radicalization and division within the Republican Party. Narrow majorities in the House have enabled right-wing radicals to disable the governing system.
Maybe they mean to repeat history When was America great the first time? Someone go ask Donald Trump. Maybe Jordan Klepper should query Trump rally attendees what “great again” means again. I’m guessing they really mean 1859. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905. From the series Great Ideas of Western Man. Historian Seth Cotlar (Rightlandia) will be in Seattle on Tuesday interviewing Rachel Maddow about her new book Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. Those who listened to her latest podcast, Ultra, know the basics. She traces the America fascist movement of the 1930s and 40s in more detail.
From an in-depth look at the Gaza crisis to a $64 billion banking scam, here’s a roundup of our reporting from the past week.
Threatening the nation that protects them Sometimes in grazing the net, a theme appears in otherwise disconnected bits of internet flotsam. The current of electrons this morning delivered several random entries pointing toward the cultural degradation of the very people in this country who decry cultural degradation the loudest. This is the real American carnage, to borrow a phrase. The meme at the top is one example. The man who entered American carnage into the lexicon spoke of “Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories, scattered like tombstones across the across the landscape of our nation, an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge.” His most ardent followers are working at this very moment to decimate public education, to proscribe what children can learn, and to ensure children remain in poverty. Violent crime is rampant, he suggested, and does to this day. People believe him. In fact, violent crime is down. Yes, property crimes are up, but along with hate crimes targeting Blacks, Latinos, and LGBTQ+ Americans. Antisemitic crimes are up as well.
In your BCTV Daily Dispatch: TWD: Daryl Dixon, Agatha: Darkhold Diaries, SAG-AFTRA, Bosch, Stranger Things, Gen V, Loki, Doctor Who & more!
Back in February of 2017, my dear mother passed away, at the age of 86. While she had been weathering a plethora of health issues for a number of years, the straw that ultimately claimed her (pancreatic cancer) was diagnosed mere weeks before she died. In fact, her turn for the worse was so sudden that my flight to Ohio turned into a grim race; near as I could figure, my plane was on final approach to Canton-Akron Airport when she slipped away (I arrived at her bedside an hour after she had died). And yes, that was hard. Since I obviously wasn’t present during (what turned out to be) her final days, I asked my brother if she had any “final words”. At first, he chuckled a little through the tears, recounting that several days prior, she had turned to him at one point and said “I wish I had some wisdom to impart. But I don’t.” I laughed (Jewish fatalism-it’s a cultural thing). Then, he remembered something. The hospice room where my mother spent her last week had a picture window facing west, with a view of a field, a pond, a small stand of trees, and an occasional deer spotting.
This is the test Ron Brownstein with a typically astute analysis of Biden’s current challenges and whether his long experience will now be seen as an asset: The escalating confrontation between Israel and Hamas is offering President Joe Biden a crucial opportunity to begin flipping the script on one of his most glaring vulnerabilities in the 2024 presidential race. For months, polls have consistently shown that most Americans believe Biden’s advanced age has diminished his capacity to handle the responsibilities of the presidency. But many Democrats believe that Biden’s widely praised response to the Mideast crisis could provide him a pivot point to argue that his age is an asset because it has equipped him with the experience to navigate such a complex challenge. “As you project forward, we are going to be able to argue that Joe Biden’s age has been central to his success because in a time of Covid, insurrection, Russian invasion of Ukraine, now challenges in the Middle East, we have the most experienced man ever as president,” said Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg.
This latest moral panic is even dumber than usual Greg Sargent on the latest: Kim Reynolds, Iowa’s Republican governor, signed a law in May that, among other provisions,requires schools to remove books that depict a “sex act.” That statutory phrase has now helped unleash a frenzy of book-banning across the state, one that illustrates a core truth about these types of censorship directives. Their vagueness is the point. When GOP-controlled state legislatures escalated the passage of laws in 2022 and 2023 restricting school materials addressing sex, gender and race, critics warned that their hazy drafting would prod educators to err on the side of censorship. Uncertain whether books or classroom discussions might run afoul of their state’s law, education officials might decide nixing them would be the “safer” option. What’s happening in Iowa right now thoroughly vindicates those fears. This week, the Iowa City Community School District released a list of 68 books that it removed from schools to comply with the law.
One of the privileges of being civilized is that it gives you the right to do very uncivilized things to the barbarians. In his public address to Joe Biden in Tel Aviv on October 18, Benjamin Netanyahu remarked, “You’ve rightly drawn a clear line between the forces of civilization and the forces of barbarism.” History […]
The post The Many and the Few appeared first on The New York Review of Books.
Trump doesn’t think it is Trouble in wingnut paradise? Fox News was essential to Donald Trump’s success in both of his last presidential runs. Now, as the former president navigates another campaign through a tidal wave of indictments and legal problems, he’s facing a much frostier relationship with the cable giant—and that could be bad news for both of them. In recent months, Trump’s inner circle has become convinced that Fox News is essentially sidelining the former president by restricting live appearances on the network. “Trump is not allowed live on Fox,” a Trump operative told The Daily Beast, chalking it up to “fear” that Trump could level a baseless allegation that could leave the network in a legal mess. A Trump adviser told The Daily Beast a similar story—that the former president isn’t allowed live on air anymore, and that Fox News prefers to have Trump in a pre-recorded setting. “Fox sent down word from the top that they don’t want to ‘platform’ Trump like they did before,” a Trump adviser told The Daily Beast. “I find it hilarious.