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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – March 3, 2024

by Tony Wikrent

Strategic Political Economy

Amitav Ghosh’s Reckoning With Opium.

Alexander Zaitchik, March 1, 2024 [The New Republic]

His new book, Smoke and Ashes, traces the ravages of British opium on India from the eighteenth century to the present.

I guess he thinks he can entice some of those RFK Jr voters over to his side. He’s also following this guy’s guidance: Shortly before Joseph Ladapo was sworn in as Florida’s surgeon general in 2022, the New Yorker ran a short column welcoming the vaccine-skeptic doctor to his new role, and highlighting his advocacy for the use of leeches in public health. It was satire of course, a teasing of the Harvard-educated physician for his unorthodox medical views, which include a steadfast belief that life-saving Covid shots are the work of the devil, and that opening a window is the preferred treatment for the inhalation of toxic fumes from gas stoves. But now, with an entirely preventable outbreak of measles spreading across Florida, medical experts are questioning if quackery really has become official health policy in the nation’s third most-populous state.

“When Australia looks out to the world, the first thing we see is the countries of ASEAN.” – Australian Foreign Minister, Penny Wong. Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s recent statement of endearment for Asean must be taken with a pinch of salt. In a recent interview with a group of South-East Asian journalists during the Asean-Australia Continue reading »

ASEAN has been around for so long media outlets rarely spell the full name – Association of Southeast Asian Nations. That sounds significant and grand. It’s not. A better title for the acronym would be Association of Supercilious Egoists and Nationalists. Even that snide put down wouldn’t do enough injustice to a ten-member group that Continue reading »

Modern Israel has existed for 860 months, yet the past 5 will define its culture, its values, and the very basis of its religious inspiration before the bar of history for generations to come. There is a scene in Thomas Keneally’s Schindler’s Ark which describes how a British Sterling bomber crashed on the factory near Continue reading »

The US seems to have decided it cannot tolerate China as a threat to its global hegemony. But how to attack or put pressure on China? Logistically and politically Taiwan is out of the question. But the brewing tension between South Korea and North Korea provides an opportunity, not unlike the Ukraine-Russia situation. In other Continue reading »

Reaction to the release of the Final Report of the Accord Review of Australia’s universities has been relatively positive. However, while some university administrators recorded their appreciation and perhaps their relief, there is little in it for academic staff. As campuses filled up again last week for the start of the academic year, the signs Continue reading »

The Federal Government last week launched a new influencer-led social media campaign to discourage vaping among young people, warning that social media is “awash” with pro-vaping content. Introduction by Croakey: Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said TikTok has more than 18 billion posts with the hashtag #vape and Instagram has more than 18,000 ‘vaping influencer’ profiles Continue reading »

The collapsing of the two categories, Judaism and Zionism to become synonymous seems to me to be a very dangerous, even foolish thing to do. Yet, to my amazement it seems many Jews are doing precisely that. It would be fair to say that such is representative of the deeply conservative Jewish establishment in Australia. Continue reading »

The relaunch of legislation to implement Article 23 of the Basic Law to prohibit national security offences, after a pause of more than 21 years, has sparked remarkably few controversies in the local community in Hong Kong. In the light of the political upheaval in 2019, and evidence of dangerous activities emerging from cases currently Continue reading »

That was Trump speaking earlier today. Here are a few more: Here’s Dr. John Gartner analyzing Trump’s speech at CPAC last weekend: Trump manifested a number of phonemic paraphasias. He was trying to say evangelist, for example, but haltingly said “evangelish.” He was trying to say “three years later,” but said, “three years, lady, lady, lady.” Trying to spit out the word “lately,” he sounded like a car with a bad battery struggling to turn over. When Trump can’t find a word his whole demeanor changes. It’s almost like someone pulled the metaphorical plug. Trump looks blank, stops in mid-sentence (or mid-word), his jaw goes a little slack, and when he starts to talk again, he slurs, speaks haltingly, and often looks confused. Trying to get the word out, he shifts to a non-word that is easier to pronounce. When people are losing their ability to use language they use non-words. They start with the stem of the real word, and then they improvise from there. In my family we call sandwiches “slamichs” because that’s what my stepson called them when he was three. It was cute then.

Playing the hand you are dealt Jonathan Last throws water on the magical thinking about skittish Democrats replacing Joe Biden on their presidential ticket. (Really? Are we still talking about this?) Scary New York Times polls? How about scarier polls? Virtually all the also-mentions poll worse than Biden against Trump: Harris, Newsome, Whitmer and Shapiro. Ten days ago already, Lawrence O’Donnell’s “the governing will not be televised” monologue refuted Ezra Klein’s speculation about Democrats replacing Biden. If that was not sufficient to dispel the notion that the DNC is going to rub a monkey’s paw and produce a younger presidential candidate, Last provides bullets on why it won’t (The Atlantic): Democrats may have a knack for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, but not since 2018. Unless the carnage abates in Gaza soon, there will exist the potential for protests in Chicago that (for those of a certain age) will evoke bad memories from 1968. Even the rowdies of The Big Tent Party will want to avoid that kind of bad press.

Blitzer edited two magazines run by AIPAC’s founder that took hard-line pro-Israel stances like supporting Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.

The post Wolf Blitzer Cut His Teeth Doing Journalism for AIPAC-Linked Propaganda Outlets appeared first on The Intercept.

“Our Palestine Question,” an explosive new book by Geoffrey Levin, delves into American Jewish McCarthyism from the 1950s through late 1970s.

The post How Israel Quietly Crushed Early American Jewish Dissent on Palestine appeared first on The Intercept.

From Ivy League tax dodges to Elon Musk’s cushy new court system, here’s all the news from The Lever this week.

Ending the Gaza carnage Yes, our outrage is selective. In a world of double standards, Nicholas Kristof reminds readers how much we have one toward Israel (New York Times): Rabbi Marvin Hier in The Jerusalem Post condemned “an unprecedented double standard” that relentlessly criticizes Israel’s bombing of Gaza but is unbothered by the Allied bombing of civilians in Germany and Japan in World War II. And the World Jewish Congress cites “criticizing Israeli defensive operations, but not those of other Western democracies” as an example of antisemitism. A fair criticism, Kristof writes, and a false one. In 2023, for example, the United Nations General Assembly adopted 15 resolutions critical of Israel, and only seven resolutions critical of all other countries in the world together, by the count of one pro-Israel group. Does anyone think that represents even-handedness?

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Ms. Marvel's Iman Vellani, Wytches, Doctor Who/Elsbeth, Superman, TWD: The Ones Who Live, SNL, and more!

Winning isn’t everything. Consider tonight’s Top 10 list, compiled in honor (or in spite) of the upcoming Oscars (March 10th). Each of these films was up for Best Picture, but “lost”. So here’s a bunch of losers (in alphabetical order) that will always be winners in my book: Apocalypse Now– “Are you an assassin, Willard?” This nightmarish walking tour through the darkest labyrinths of the human soul (disguised as a Vietnam War film) remains director Francis Ford Coppola’s most polarizing work. Adapted from Joseph Conrad’s classic novel Heart of Darkness by Coppola and John Milius, it’s an unqualified masterpiece to some; bloated, self-important nonsense to others. I kind of like it. In the course of the grueling shoot, Coppola had a nervous breakdown, and star Martin Sheen had a heart attack. Now that’s what I call “suffering for your art”. And always remember-never get outta the boat. Year nominated: 1979 Lost to: Kramer vs. Kramer Chinatown–There are many Deep Thoughts that I have gleaned over the years via repeated viewings of Roman Polanski’s 1974 “sunshine noir”.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

MSNBC’s data guy Steve Kornacki took a look at the polling a few days ago that I think addresses some of the weirdness we’re seeing with the national polls and the election results. Donald Trump is winning his primaries handily and has a virtual lock on the Republican presidential nomination — but a common interpretation of the results says that he is also exhibiting profound weaknesses among independents that portend dire general election consequences. But there’s a hitch. A look at general election polling reveals a completely different story among independent voters — and a dive into all the other data we have on the 2024 presidential race shows why Trump’s poor independent numbers in the primary and better performance in general election polls are completely consistent with each other. The short answer: These are two very different groups of voters. First, the evidence for Trump’s weakness among independents voting in this year’s GOP primaries is straightforward. Despite the widely acknowledged — even by his critics — inevitability of his nomination, Trump is still losing around 40% of the vote in Republican contests.

CBS's Elsbeth is a fun new spinoff from "The Good Fight," but it feels more like if Jodie Whittaker's Doctor Who was more of a detective show.