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Most of the world’s trade is done in dollars, even for trade that never goes to the US.

Most of the world’s money transfers at some point go thru the western banking system, and quite often an American bank, even if both parties are not in America. This is how the US justified its’ anti-FIFA case: the bribes, though at never point involving any Americans or going to America, at some point went thru a US bank on their way to their target.

Everyone needs (or needed) dollars, and everyone needed the Western banking system. There was no real alternative, and to a large extent there still isn’t.

As GB News goes into meltdown following Dan Wootton and Laurence Fox's on air comments about Ava Evans, Byline Times reveals the controversial personal histories of five employees – including CEO Angelos Frangopoulos, who enjoys the protection of a non-disclosure agreement over sexual harassment allegations

“Kevin McCarthy needs to look at himself in the mirror and ask if he wants to be an adult, or a Republican,” the congressman said.

Real talk Last week President Biden gave a speech that went largely unmarked in the press and it’s really too bad. It may be the best speech he’s ever given and if people saw it it might set their minds at ease a little bit about his prospects in the next election and the following four years. He’s never been much of a speaker but the speeches he’s been making on the threat to democracy are excellent. This is the fourth one he’s given and it’s a sincere effort on his part to which we should all pay attention. After all, while we are all painfully aware of the right wing’s anti-democratic turn, he is the president and it stands to reason he sees this from a different perspective. That he is so determined to sound the alarm should get much more attention than it does. On the heels of a bizarre impeachment inquiry hearing last week in which Republicans House members threw out outrageous smears against him without a shred of evidence and a GOP primary debate that had the candidates yelling at each other like drunk sports hooligans, Biden traveled to Arizona to open the John McCain Institute and Library.

The largest telescope that will ever be built*

Rishi Sunak's Party is placing itself in opposition not just to its own record, but to observable reality itself, reports Adam Bienkov

If the rain comes | They run and hide their heads Brooklyn flooded on Friday. Again. Subway lines shut down as water poured off streets, down stairways and into stations. A niece reported she had to take cabs into the city for work and the basement entry was knee-deep. Nancy Walecki wrote last week at The Atlantic: New York City’s sewer system is built for the rain of the past—when a notable storm might have meant 1.75 inches of water an hour. It wasn’t built to handle the rainfall from Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Sandy, or, more recently, Hurricane Ida—which dumped 3.15 inches an hour on Central Park. And it wasn’t built to handle the kind of extreme rainfall that is becoming routine: The city flooded last December, last April, and last July—an unusual seasonal span. “We now have in New York something much more like a tropical-rainfall pattern,” Rohit Aggarwala, New York City’s environmental-protection commissioner, said yesterday at The Atlantic Festival. “And it happens over and over again.” It happened today.

Dave Eggers’s latest book, The Eyes and the Impossible, is the story of a dog named Johannes. Johannes is a free dog, a fast dog—such a fast dog! He lives in an urban park by the sea, and every day, he runs through the park, seeing all, missing nothing, and reporting what he sees to the park’s three ancient Bison, the Keepers of the Equilibrium. But the Equilibrium has been disrupted.

Gorgeously illustrated throughout by Shawn Harris,The Eyes and the Impossible is a lyrical, soulful book full of wit and passion—a timeless story for readers of all ages. To celebrate the release of a new, oversized edition, we present an interview with Dave and editor Taylor Norman.

Republican urges Chaos Caucus: “All of them need to grow up” Crisp fall air on the first Monday in October is perhaps a reminder to take a moment Yes, the ethics-challenged U.S. Supreme Court begins its new term, God help us. Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern do some teeth-grinding over having to write the obligatory journalistic “curtain-raiser” as the new term opens. The question “is not if we should be worried, but exactly how worried we should be.” What will the Roberts court do next with “the most dangerous and radical ideas to emerge from the conservative legal movement” courtesy of Donald Trump and Leonard Leo? Yes, despite all the oddsmakers’ bets on which elected Black woman California Gov. Gavin Newsom, would appoint to fill out the term of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein, he chose instead Emily’s List president Laphonza Butler. The Washington Post reports, “She will become the second Black woman after Harris to represent California in the Senate and the first Black lesbian to openly serve in Congress, a statement from Newsom’s office said.

Rather than demand U.S. citizens receive fair and decent treatment by Israel, the Biden administration added yet another award to the government leader of apartheid Israel.

The post Biden’s Visa Waiver: A Gift to Netanyahu’s Apartheid Regime appeared first on MintPress News.

If you aren’t familiar with the tune, here it is, but be warned, it will be droning on in your head for the rest of the day.

“‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”
by Emily Dickinson

Hopey, hopey, hopey, hopey,
Feathered thing when I am mopey,
Perched in my soul—man, I hope she
Never stops singing at all!

Sweetest in the gale is heard,
Not even storms can stop this bird,
Keeps you warm, despair deferred,
I love my sister-in-law!

I think I’ll stay in tonight, my room rules!

Gettysburg Address
by Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln, Lincoln,
Eighty-seven years ago our forefathers were thinkin’,
We’ll bring forth a new nation; now it’s shrinkin’,
We’re in a Civil War!

The world won’t note what we say here today,
(I’m just being modest, okay?),
But can’t forget the price that they paid,
My wife’s middle name is Todd!

In the USA, you can’t break away. I’m gay!

An essential component of Neoclassical microeconomics is the proposition that firms maximize their profits by equating marginal revenue—the addition to total revenue caused by the last unit sold—to marginal cost—the addition to total costs caused by the last unit produced. This proposition plays a fundamental role in all DSGE-based macroeconomic models too, in the form … Continue reading "Profit Maximization in the Real World"

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Adam Copeland/AEW, SAG-AFTRA/AMPTP, NYCC 2023, Doctor Who, The Umbrella Academy, For All Mankind, and more!

The sham ‘regulator’ admits there are standards problems at Sir Robbie Gibb’s newspaper but insists – against all the evidence – that it has the matter under control, writes Brian Cathcart

The lax management of the UK companies register allows fake businesses to proliferate

The remarkable story of one man’s self-imposed exile on an uninhabited island after being wrongly suspected of a crime

- by Aeon Video

Watch at Aeon

The cognitive work involved in lying is relevant to lie detection and could help explain why some people are better liars

- by Molly MacMillan

Read at Psyche

How Eugene V Debs turned American republicanism against the chiefs of capitalism – and became a true crusader for freedom

- by Tom O’Shea

Read at Aeon

Since 1960, the gap in GDP per capita between rich and poor countries has remained wide. Yet the gap in death rates has practically vanished during that period.

Why do we put up with daily assaults on our health? It has everything to do with corporate power. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 22nd September 2023 There are some things we rightly find intolerable, such as the possession of poorly trained, aggressive dogs. There are other things, whose impacts are many thousands […]

In May 2023, when the British Office of National Statistics (ONS) released the March-quarter national accounts data (first estimate), which showed that real GDP grew by only 0.1 per cent in the first quarter and a rate equal to the December-quarter 2022, the critics were out in force. Brexit this. Brexit that. Graphs were created…