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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – April 7, 2024

by Tony Wikrent

 

Strategic Political Economy

Navies are obsolete, but no one will admit it 

[Crooked Timber, via Naked Capitalism 04-04-2024]

 

Rethinking tanks on the modern battlefield

Stephen Bryen [AsiaTimes 04-02-2024]

He’s a tried and true Trumper and I’m sure he believes that Ukraine is responsible for election interference rather than Russia. That’s what Putin told Trump and now half the GOP (at least) believes it. I seriously doubt he meant to say Russia, considering Trump’s fealty to Vladimir Putin. He didn’t misspeak. Some Republicans know otherwise. But will they have the nerve to defy Dear Leader? I’m not so sure:

Some sobering-up music From Jason Statler (LOLGOP) at the I Know How Much You Care substack: I keep hearing Janine Melnitz (Annie Potts) saying, “Yes, of course they’re serious… ” How serious? Statler adds, “But don’t believe me or Trump. Believe the entire Republican establishment.” ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● For The Win, 5th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide GOTV planning guide at ForTheWin.us.

I’m a security researcher working in the journalism field, and I’m here to rain on your dangerous, dumb parade.

The post Forget a Ban — Why Are Journalists Using TikTok in the First Place? appeared first on The Intercept.

Counterrevolution? Counter what? The U.S. is still processing the Civil War and its aftermath over 150 years later. When I arrived from the Midwest as a kid, southerners still tossed around yankee as a slur. Israel hasn’t had even a century to process the Holocaust and isn’t done. Now Israelis have to process Oct. 7. I’m not optimistic where this will go near term: Six months after Oct. 7, Israelis are struggling to recover their bearings, their core, their belief that Jews are safe in Israel. In Israel’s south and north, more than 120,000 people have been evacuated, their neighborhoods transformed into front lines. The homes sit empty, toys still scattered in front yards. In the southern kibbutzim, where 3,000 Hamas-led fighters launched a surprise assault on that indelible Saturday morning, the residents return not to live but to serve as guides for visitors from abroad. They give heart-rending tours, recounting how 1,200 people were slaughtered and 253 hostages were dragged into Gaza, according to Israeli government figures. Evacuees fear that their communities are becoming places frozen in time and loss.

Doctor Who is incomplete without a companion - the Doctor's foil, best friend, and forever unrequited love story in a forever chaotic journey.

Neo-liberals and libertarians have always provided a lot of ideologically founded ideas and ‘theories’ to underpin their Panglossian view on markets. But when they are tested against reality they usually turn out to be wrong. The promised results are simply not to be found. And that goes for for-profit private schools too. Sweden introduced a […]

Economic policy has been erased from the political discourse, which is a problem for Biden — and for democracy.

The ancient amphitheatre was our destination; we had been walking toward it excitedly, with greater and greater speed.

The post My Glamorous Life: Roman Holiday appeared first on Zeldman on Web and Interaction Design.

Depending on your worldview, this coming Monday’s super-hyped solar eclipse may be interpreted as: a). A sign of the impending apocalypse, b). A sign that once in a blue moon, the moon blows in and obscures the sun, giving humanity the impression (for a few heart stopping moments) that the apocalypse has, in fact, arrived, or c). A dollar sign for event promoters, hoteliers, tow truck drivers, and people who sell cheap cardboard sunglasses. I know. I’m a cynical bastard. If the “Great North American Eclipse” forces people to tear themselves away from their 5 inch iPhone screen to gaze up at The Big Sky, and ponder the awesomeness and vastness of the cosmos (and most importantly, humankind’s relative insignificance in the grand scheme of things)…then I’m for it (I Googled “can you view the eclipse with a…” and right after “mirror”, “sunglasses” and “welding mask”, there it was- friggin’ “iPhone”). Do me a favor.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon

Tom Nichols says it all Trump’s making us all crazy and we have to resist: The 2024 election has become a kind of waking nightmare in which many of us stare at Donald Trump as he unleashes some new attack on any number of targets: a judge’s daughter, immigrants, the rule of law, American national security, the Constitution. And we blink and shake our heads, stunned to think that many of our fellow citizens are eager to put this autocratic ignoramus back in the White House. In a more normal time in American life, people had to leave politics for having a nanogram of Trump’s baggage. Think of the late Senator Thomas Eagleton, the 1972 Democratic vice-presidential pick who had to drop out of the race because he’d been treated for depression. The idea—how old-fashioned it seems now—was that America could not risk any possible mental-health issues not only in the president, but even in the person next in the line of succession.

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It’s still happening If you wonder why so many Republicans are now backing Vladimir Putin and are hostile to Ukraine in its fight to remain a free sovereign country, you don’t have to look much farther than the fact that they are members of a cult that worships a man who seems to have an unusual affinity for Valdimir Putin. That certainly informs the cultists’ beliefs. But just as important is the right wing media’s eager dissemination of Russian talking points. Even some Republicans are becoming alarmed: The most striking example came this week. In an interview with Puck News’s Julia Ioffe, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.) — none other than the GOP chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — flat-out said that Russian propaganda had “infected a good chunk of my party’s base.” McCaul suggested conservative media was to blame. “There are some more nighttime entertainment shows that seem to spin, like, I see the Russian propaganda in some of it — and it’s almost identical [to what they’re saying on Russian state television] — on our airwaves,” McCaul said.

Rigging the election for Dear Leader And Trump and his henchmen are lying about it: Former President Donald Trump picked up a phone to pressure a Nebraska state senator to revive a winner-take-all system of awarding its Electoral College votes for president, sources told the Nebraska Examiner on Friday. Trump, the sources said, called State Sen. Tom Brewer, who chairs the State Legislature’s Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee, and urged him to take action to get a winner-take-all bill up for debate in the waning days of the 2024 session. Four working days remain in the 60-day session. Brewer, the sources said, responded that it doesn’t work that way. The deadline is past to vote a bill out of a committee and get it passed this year. In addition, the Speaker of the Legislature on Friday said it’s also too late to amend a bill into another bill. Trump then reportedly told Brewer, who is term-limited this year, that his political career was over. Brewer, 65, is a decorated military veteran who represents Nebraska’s Sandhills area.

Australia is conducting its first climate risk assessment and developing an adaptation plan. Not only humans experience heat stress, so do other animals and plants. If you must feed wild birds, listen to the experts’ tips. Assessing Australia’s climate risks The Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water (DCCEEW) has released the Continue reading »

A criminal is one who seriously breaks the law. By that measure Albanese, Dutton and most pollies across Australia are criminals together with their supporters. Human laws can be broken and repaired with a gaol term or a fine. Nature’s laws cannot be broken without continuing adverse consequences which cannot be repaired, and which persist Continue reading »

Right now, with Israel about to bomb Rafah to smithereens, world leaders including our own are chorusing—as they have repeatedly done for decades—that ‘We support a two-state solution’. And what has that chorus achieved over the years? Other than making the people saying it feel good, nothing! The death count of Palestinians in Gaza since Continue reading »

Over 13,000 children have been killed in Gaza. Amr Abdallah was one of them. On the morning Amr Abdallah was killed, he woke before dawn to say his Ramadan prayers with his father, mother, two younger brothers and aunt, in an open field in southern Gaza. “It is You we worship and You we ask Continue reading »

Very recently, the leading British daily, The Guardian, ran remarkably informing side-by-side stories covering official United States perspectives on the Gaza genocide. Story one highlighted how the US State Department argued that: “Famine is already probably present in some areas of northern Gaza” and was a risk in the center and south of Gaza. Story Continue reading »

The Washington Post took a look at what we know about the state of Trump’s health: As former president Donald Trump escalated his attacks on President Biden’s health and mental fitness last fall, Trump released the first updated report on his own condition in more than three years. This assessment, however, stood in stark contrast to the relatively detailed reports released by the White House during his term. Instead of specifics like blood pressure and medications, the letter had just three paragraphswithout specific numbers proclaiming that Trump was in “excellent health” and had “exceptional” cognitive ability. It did not disclose Trump’s weight. And after relying on a longtime personal doctor and then twoWhite House physicians who had attested to his well-being in office, Trump turned to an unknown on the national stage to providethis report: Bruce A. Aronwald, a 64-year-old osteopathic physician from New Jersey — and a longtime member of Trump’s Bedminster golf club.