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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – November 17, 2024

by Tony Wikrent

 

Strategic Political Economy

The Elephant in the Room–No, the Other Elephant 

Charles Hugh Smith [Of Two Minds, via Naked Capitalism 11-15-2024]

…The reason why it’s so easy to ignore extreme wealth inequality (EWI) is that we don’t experience EWI as a thing, we experience a decline in our standard of living as wealth is siphoned up into the top 10%….

Love these billionaire tech bros. But hey, at least Elon has the heart to warn us that it’s going to cause us all hardship — but it’s for our own good. “We have to reduce spending to live within our means,” Musk said. “And, you know, that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity.” Many economists agree that Trump’s economic and fiscal proposals could spark an economic calamity, though it is not clear whether they have considered, or given credence, to Musk’s calls for austerity.  Is austerity what people voted for? I’m going to guess no. But if these miscreants have their way, they’re going to get it:

Our challenge now is to detach Australia from the death grip of the United States and to pursue an independent future, which we are quite capable of doing. To do so we will need not only to remove the old sycophantic parties but also to root out the US ‘security’ zealots from our own secretive Continue reading »

​Two weeks ago, I was at a public event in Northern NSW listening to five speakers reflect on the state of the climate and what we might do about it – that, at least, was how it was pitched. As the evening wore on, the discussion slowly but surely morphed into what is the well-versed Continue reading »

On the original Armistice Day in 1918, there was rejoicing at the return of peace as well as the grief, sadness and horror at the appalling human cost of World War 1 – “The War to End Wars”. Since that time the techniques for damaging and destroying human lives have “progressed” to their current, devastating Continue reading »

Every time a fascist-flirting regime is defeated in an election, more column inches and podcast minutes are devoted to the sense that the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice. When Trump, Bolsonaro, Sunak’s Tories or the Law and Justice Party in Poland lose elections, the centrist commentariat breathes a sigh of relief, believing Continue reading »

As reported in Pearls and Irritations on 11 November 2024, the ACCC executive members who had accepted membership to the QANTAS Chairman’s lounge should have divested themselves of that benefit before commencing the investigation into QANTAS or resigned. Following on from the ACCC issue, Australia at least at the Federal level, has a very serious Continue reading »

If you are like me, you are fed up with the so-called educated ‘Left’ who are not at all educated in the underlying causes of humankind’s current problems and the solutions to them. You will also be fed up with people believing that when we elect Left or Centre-Left parties, the world is on track Continue reading »

AI is already showing dangerous signs of delivering more harm than good. The motivations behind its creation show why. Alessandra Pucci (Pearls & Irritations, October 27) has raised several important points that need careful investigation. But because of the interactions between AI and the collective human brain, these are unlikely to be adequately investigated. As Continue reading »

When Hong Kong’s policy makers were formulating the offence of foreign interference endangering national security, they did not operate in a vacuum. International models were examined, and they heavily influenced the final product. They included the National Security Legislation Amendment (Espionage and Amendment) Act 2018 of Australia, now incorporated into the country’s Criminal Code Act Continue reading »

The cause of Kamala Harris’ disastrous failure in the 2024 presidential election will forever be debated, but there are good reasons to believe the Israeli genocide in Gaza played a significant role. Why did Kamala Harris lose the 2024 presidential election? There is no shortage of answers to this question, most of them self-affirming and Continue reading »

Kitchy and quasi-totalitarian ghastliness, USA (from 2008)

These people are prepared to destroy everything, as long as they can command the ruins. By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 15th November 2024 Imagine, as many people do, an all-seeing eye in the sky, looking down on planet Earth. Imagine seeing what it sees. It watches, over the course of decades, ice caps […]

Rachel Reeves thinks that the regulation imposed on the UK financial sector in the wake of the Great Financial Crisis has ‘gone too far’. She described the UK finance sector as the ‘crown jewel’ of the UK economy and argued that its potential had been hemmed in by unnecessary regulation since 2008. Reeves pledged to […]

Silicon Valley has successfully rebranded military contracting as a proud national duty for the industry.

The post Trump’s Election Is Also a Win for Tech’s Right-Wing “Warrior Class” appeared first on The Intercept.

I  det senaste avsnittet av Starta Pressarna  pratar Daniel Suhonen och Max Jerneck med Andreas Cervenka om hans nyutkomna bok Fuskbygget. Hur har vi kunnat tillåta att våra bostäder har blivit en handelsvara som gör storbankerna stormrika? Och varför har staten tillåtIt framväxten av ett system som förvandlar ett i grunden mänskligt behov av att […]

History never repeats (I tell myself before I go to sleep) – Split Enz These past 10 days have felt like…a bad dream: Last night with @realDonaldTrump & @JMilei pic.twitter.com/8AjQ8QMAIM — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2024 But alas, as Mia Farrow famously exclaimed in Rosemary’s Baby: Speaking of bad dreams…in an excellent piece published this week titled “Alexander Hamilton’s Nightmare Realized: How the Billionaires Hijacked America”, Thom Hartmann writes: Alexander Hamilton thought he (and the others who wrote the Constitution) had it all figured out. He and his colleagues never imagined that a group of billionaires would spend 43 years and billions of dollars to seize the US Supreme Court, which would then legalize political bribery. They never conceived of a foreign billionaire family coming to American and building a nationwide media ecosystem that was capable of convincing Americans that up was down, wrong was right, and a convicted fraudster and rapist would be a noble president.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Apparently, they don’t know: This grotesque action is happening all over the country and as far as I can tell nobody knows who’s doing it. I guess the point is to harrass and frighten kids. It’s working: Several Santa Monica High School students also received the derogatory message; they immediately reported the situation to school administrators and their parents.  “I sent it to my family group chat and was like ‘Oh my god, someone sent me this message,’ and [my mom] was like ‘This is not okay’,” said Aubrielle Gomez. “I was shocked and I kind of started laughing because I thought it wasn’t real.” Ericka Lesley, whose children attend Santa Monica High School and were sent the text, says that the hateful messaging underscores a much larger issue not only plaguing California but all of America. “My son wants to leave the country; he doesn’t feel safe here,” Lesley told KTLA. “There are other people who say ‘Oh, we’re in California, we’re okay,’ — we’ve become too comfortable.

Leaked files show top UK military figures conspired to carry out the Kerch bridge bombing, covertly train “Gladio”-style stay-behind forces in Ukraine, and groom the British public for a drop in living standards caused by the proxy war against Russia. Emails and internal documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal details of a cabal of British military and intelligence veterans which plotted to escalate and prolong the Ukraine proxy war “at all costs.” Convened under the direction of the British Ministry […]

The post Leaks expose secret British military cell plotting to ‘keep Ukraine fighting’ first appeared on The Grayzone.

The post Leaks expose secret British military cell plotting to ‘keep Ukraine fighting’ appeared first on The Grayzone.

Before the election, Rolling Stone asked a number of experts on authoritarianism about what to do if Trump won. They all had good advice but, for me, this is at the top of the list: Seeing the Threat Clearly Experts in authoritarianism insist that Trump’s dictatorial threats need to be taken with gravity because he’s already done “things that autocrats do,” says Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who is an expert in Italian fascism and the author of Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present.  “He has been able to domesticate a very old, storied party, and truly make it his personal tool,” she tells Rolling Stone. “He instigated a violent coup attempt,” and — instead of “having to go into exile or going to prison, like in Peru” — he “managed to paint it as a positive thing” or to make “a lot of Americans shrug their shoulders at it.” These are “preconditions for autocracy,” she insists.