The Stalinist retreat from science and logic persisted following the Soviet Union’s collapse and is now the main tendency of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule. With his faith-based mythology, warping of history, and denial of facts, Putin’s withdrawal from contemporary Europe could not be starker.
Reading
A new book about feminism, education, and the challenges to truth from new right-wing politics has been published, with general analyses, case studies, and discussions of how to respond.
I use Troppo to make various notes for file as it were for reference in future. And on wanting to record something I found that I hadn’t reproduced this post — which was originally at The Mandarin — here. So … Continue reading
As always, if you find value in this work I do, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, Sparky’s List! You can get it in your inbox or read it on Patreon, the content is the same.
This is an edited version of an article that first appeared in Crikey on 3 June 2022. As I see it, the four most pressing challenges for the new Minister for health and ageing concern: 1. promoting health (not just … Continue reading
Besides the crucial COVID-19 vaccine patent waiver, far more is at stake at this ministerial than is generally known.
After many postponements, the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) of the World Trade Organization (WTO) will take place June 12–15, 2022, in Geneva.
Živjo from Slovenija, where there are no McMansions. (I finally know peace.) And yet at the same time I grew homesick enough to make my way back into the Cook County Suburbs, namely Barrington, namely South Barrington, namely McMansion Hell. If only in spirit.
This $3 million, 19,700 square foot house (built in 2001) showed up in a previous post, but only its facade. I promise you it’s worth cracking it open and seeing the insides, like a gooey, ugly egg. This is probably the first post in this blog’s history where there were no bedroom photos in the listing. Perhaps Realtors™ have learned a lesson from the “Welcome to Poundtown” incident. Anyway, here goes.
Remember her? Wish I didn’t.
If we want politicians to actually represent their constituents, we need to free them from the pressure of toeing the party line. A week or so ago someone tweeted this to me. It was a response to my Crikey! article … Continue reading
Cambridge University's professor of American History Gary Gerstle discusses his most recent book, about how the neoliberal order came about, why it is faltering, and the indeterminacy of what comes next.
As I struggle with some newly discovered health problems, my attention tends to drift to different things. These are two.
The Missing Average and the two Australias.
This is a recent temperature anomaly map produced by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, reproduced today by the ABC, with Kate Doyle’s customarily excellent comments:
We’ve all seen it: paper money that’s just plain worn out. Here’s what happens to unfit currency.
I’m in the midst of recovering from covid—my family and I were hit with it two weeks ago—and doing a fair amount of reading. Just prior to getting sick, I had completed a long piece on oligarchy and the Constitution, which is actually the fourth in a series of pieces I’ve completed over the last few months that I expect to appear in print this summer. (The other three are on Adam Smith, John Maynard Keynes, and the idea of late capitalism.) The combination of being sick, and finishing those pieces, left me with time and energy for little more than resting in bed and reading. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Here is what I’ve been reading or re-reading: […]
A Time Traveller’s (Eco) Footprint
By Jez Strickley
“The inventor made the insecticide everlasting.” (Planet of Giants, 1964, Louis Marks)
Columbia University's renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs talks about the lessons he has learned from consulting with governments around the world, about how global problems, such as the war in Ukraine, will only be solved via efforts to understand the other side, never through force.
Are there alternative, less socially costly, ways to bring inflation down?
Evidence-based answers to the main (policy) questions concerning the return of high inflation
A specter is haunting the US—the specter of stagflation
Financial Times’ Martin Wolf (2022) is the latest influential voice sounding the alarm bell on ‘the threat of stagflation’ and calling for the Fed to drastically raise interest rates to bring inflation down to its target level. Published on May 24, Wolf’s diagnosis of where the stagflation in the US economy is coming from reflects current establishment opinion: nominal demand, fuelled by over-expansionary fiscal and monetary policies during the COVID-19 crisis, is exceeding US supply. To bring down inflation, these macroeconomic policy errors need to be corrected convincingly and as soon as possible. This is how Wolf puts it:
As always, if you find value in this work I do, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, Sparky’s List! You can get it in your inbox or read it on Patreon, the content is the same.
I’m delighted to tell you that my new book ‘Days Like These: An Alternative Guide to the Year in 366 Poems’ is now available to pre-order from your local, friendly bookshop. It’s publishing in October, just before tea time. It contains a poem for every day of the year, each one inspired by an event…
Columbia University's renowned economist Jeffrey Sachs talks about the lessons he has learned from consulting with governments around the world, about how global problems, such as the war in Ukraine, will only be solved via efforts to understand the other side, never through force.
James M. Buchanan's defenders argue he was not racist because of his ties with the anti-apartheid economist W.H. Hutt, but this defense fails miserably
The great student of rhetoric Kenneth Burke described the output of his era’s “debunkers” in a manner that also captures the conduct of many libertarians who have rallied to the defense of Nobel Laureate James M. Buchanan over the past few years. "It would seem they are no longer seeking good arguments; rather they are seeking any arguments, if only there be enough of them to keep running through the headlines,” wrote Burke. “Are there no eagles among their utterances? Very well, let them be instead a swarm of mosquitoes.”
One swarm of mosquitos let loose by the sentries of the libertarian cause circles around the South African economist, William Harold Hutt. Buchanan’s acolytes are adamant that his support of tax-funded subsidies for segregated private schools in the midst of Virginia’s Massive Resistance to Brown v. Board of Education had nothing to do with a racist preference for the maintenance of separate schools.