The outcome of a massive police-caused tragedy on Indonesia’s Java Island got less media coverage than a silly white woman’s argument with a brown cop in Bali. The ‘lady’ didn’t like being stopped for riding a motorbike bare-headed, though no helmet law is needed for Indonesian traffic – just a want to live. A story Continue reading »
Reading
If Thucydides were asked about what’s happening in relations between the US and China today, what would he say? That was the question posed to me at the Davos World Economic Forum in January. I responded that he would say that this is a classic Thucydidean rivalry in which the two parties are right on Continue reading »
If not arrested by Friday, Trump said, “I will perform a citizen’s arrest on myself.”
Here is a new illustration to announce I'll be the 8 and 9 April in Mons, Belgium, for signing sessions at the festival Trolls & Légendes. Looking forward to meeting many of you!
by Brian Czech
Banks are macroeconomic mirrors. They reflect the activity of the real economy. If the economy is growing, so are the banks, starting with the Federal Reserve and its regional banks, all the way out to tiny First Michigan Bank, Oakwood Bank (the smallest bank in bank-laden Texas), and the patriotically named Citizens Bank of Americus (Georgia).
Not only do the banks,
The post Lesson from a Failed Bank: Only One Real Start-Up appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.
He went to jail for a hush money scheme Here’s a good rundown of why the Stormy Daniels case matters from Amanda Carpenter. It’s actually important, even in the great scheme of things. Donald Trump’s defenders would love for people to believe that the former president entered into totally normal, by-the-book, run-of-the-mill legal agreements with adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal to purchase their silence, and that he did so in a way that was agreeable and beneficial to all parties. But that’s not what happened. Trump risks indictment because, allegedly at his behest, an illegal scheme was undertaken to deceive the public at a critical moment before the 2016 election. That was the purpose of the “hush money” payments—not to enrich the women or settle a personal matter, but, in the words of the man who went to prison for arranging the deals, “for the principal purpose of influencing the election.” A reminder of what really happened: In 2016, Daniels and McDougal each wanted to sell her own story about liaisons with Trump to the press.
Capricorn
Spring has sprung, and flowers are blooming. In fact, everyone everywhere is blooming except for you, dear Capricorn. Dry, parched days lay ahead, so this month is the perfect time to join a local knitting circle or Wiccan cooking class. Or any other group that would never be described as “dewy.”
Aquarius
If you choose to be happy, happy you will be. Just not any time soon because you’re a woman over forty. Is this new anger because of hormones or because your moon is rising? Or from some other planetary shit we astrologers make up after knocking back a few mojitos? No idea. You’re just going to be really pissed off for a while.
Pisces
Your natural tendency to be adventurous has been derailed now that your time of the month no longer uses a calendar and just comes and goes as it damn pleases. But don’t let your inability to confidently wear white pants keep you from traveling, dear one. You can probably make it to the nearest Piggly Wiggly and back for a tub of mint chip.
Following the latest banking crisis, monetary authorities should seriously consider how modern digital technologies could be used to avert such problems in the future. A central bank digital currency would both eliminate many barriers to financial transactions and end the risk of bank runs once and for all....
Project Syndicate
Jan Eeckhout | Professor of Economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Steve Martin plays with Alison Brown and some of the most revered players in acoustic music on Alison Brown's new single "Foggy Morning Breaking.”
Bezalel Smotrich has never hidden or disguised his opinions or violent tendencies, and neither his hate-filled opinions nor his violent past has stood in the way of his meteoric rise in Israeli politics.
The post The Glaring Hypocrisy Surrounding Bezel Smotrich’s Genocidal Comments appeared first on MintPress News.
‘Opposition leader’ benefited from Tory legislation enacted specifically to benefit him ‘Labour’ ‘leader’ Keir Starmer has rightly been attacked for his closeness to the Establishment and the British security state, which has seen him mount no meaningful opposition to the Tories while colluding on repressive legislation such as the ‘spycops’ law to give undercover police […]
Headlines we’re sure to see It’s not as if the question of Donald Trump running for president from jail hasn’t been addressed before. It’s just that Trump’s arrest seems more imminent. The chances of Trump actually being held in jail pending trial for any of four separate investigations seems remote. That doesn’t stop the speculation. Newsweek (Wednesday): CNN (Wednesday): Mad Magazine should run a “Headlines We’re Sure To See” bit on Trump’s arrest. We’ve been here before.
It’s Women’s History Month, and all month long, we’ve been spotlighting incredible women in tech on our Twitter and Linkedin pages. Today, we’re bringing you an extended highlight of one of the most impressive women in tech today – Anneleen Demasure, CEO of Belgium-based digital experience agency Dropsolid.
Read on to hear Anneleen’s thoughts on being a woman in technology and her advice for other women who want to enter the field!
The war game just changed big time, actually for the first time since the dominance of sea power and then air power. This transition makes a great deal of very expensive military equipment obsolete. Moreover, the West is following in this domain, and not leading.
This article does not mention another emergent military domain, space. Spending on missiles, missile defense, and space capabilities will shape the bulk of military spending, inclduing research and production, going forward.
This will not obviate the need for boots on the ground and here a transition is underway to autonomous machines on the ground, in the air, and beneath of surface of the seas.
All of the this presages a shift in military spending and potentially increases inorder to catch up and dominate. While the primary players will be the US, Russia, China, and India, this trend will spill over into the entire international arms market.
Alex Krainer's TrendCompass
Alex Krainer's TrendCompass
Yves here. I’m preserving the original OilPrice headline since it invokes one of the themes of a new pro-fossil-fuels messaging campaign, that migrating to cleaner energy sources is contrary to energy security. It’s not hard to see that message hitting home with a lot of voters, particularly ones that live in suburbs or other area with poor public transportation, or in parts of the world where there’s not enough sun for rooftop solar to be anything more than a secondary power source.
One reason the oil, specifically Shell messaging will strike home at least in Europe is the respite from super high energy prices came largely from government subsidies. Those will be reduced or even gone next winter. Bearing the full higher energy cost will make many consumers want relief, climate change impact be damned. Of course, the obvious expedient of rolling back sanctions on Russia is off the table.
The pension reforms currently provoking general strikes, mass protests and widespread public anger in France were first pledged by Emmanual Macron in his 2017 presidential election campaign. Trade unions and opposition parties began to organise against the reforms before the Covid-19 pandemic forced the government to postpone its plans. Then, on January 6th of this […]
I had a sense of déjà vu this week when I read the latest release from Australia’s Productivity Commission – Advancing Prosperity – which was released on March 17, 2023 and is a five-yearly exercise conducted by the Commission on behalf of the Australian government. Frankly, if the government was looking to cut spending while advancing material well-being in the community, they could simply tell the Commission to cease doing this work and instruct the staff involved to get real jobs and do something that matters. We just get a regurgitation of GIGO, that well-practiced art of pretending to have something authoritative to say while one is grabbing money out of the till at a rate of knots to advance self-interest! The problem is that the ordinary citizen is ill-equipped to understand any of the technical hoopla that attempts to shroud these types of Report in ‘credibility’, and so is at a disadvantage when trying to determine whether they should support it through the ballot box. Neoliberalism relies on and exploits our ignorance....William Mitchell — Modern Monetary Theory
Big Oil rollls out new messaging designed to stoke worry about green energy plans.
Discover the precarious state of the banking system and the need for regulatory reform in this incisive interview with James Fauntleroy, a regular contributor to the Revolutionary Blackout Network, as he discusses the potential for a catastrophic economic crisis.
The post The Banking Crisis, Housing Insecurity and Preparing for the Coming Economic Collapse With James Fauntleroy appeared first on MintPress News.
Indulge me for a moment. This is how “The Prophecy” in my 1962 high school yearbook began. It was written by some of my classmates in the year we graduated from Friends Seminary in New York City. As I wander, I finally run into one of my classmates, now “a skinny old man with bushy white hair, wearing a loose deer skin.” And yes, whatever happened (that “great invasion”) while I was underground in — as anyone of that period would have known — a private nuclear-fallout shelter, is unclear. Still, in the world I find on emerging, all my former classmates, whom I meet one after another in joking fashion, now live in caves. In other words, it had obviously... Read more
Source: Prophecies, Then and Now appeared first on TomDispatch.com.
Especially if you’re underage and undocumented The graphic above popped up on Twitter last light and then Helaine Olen did this morning in writing about kids working in meatpacking (Washington Post): “A self-supporting and self-respecting democracy can plead no justification for the existence of child labor,” wrote Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937, as he sent the legislation known as the Fair Labor Standards Act to Congress. With the bill, which also established a national minimum wage, lawmakers condemned the ghastly practice of children toiling on factory floors to the past. But American child labor is making a comeback. Underage children are operating fryers in restaurant kitchens and assembling parts at auto plants. Last month, when the New York Times published a blockbuster expose on how some of the nation’s mostprominent companies depend on subcontractors who illegally employ migrant children, it brought attention to an ongoing horror. The Economic Policy Institute recently crunched Labor Department data and discovered an almost 300 percent increase in child labor violations since 2015.