Reading

Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 06:00

In my undergraduate dissertation, titled: An exploration into how neoliberal economic policies have impacted Britain's North - South divide in urban spaces since the 1980s, I explore how Britain’s adoption of neoliberal policies furthered existing urban inequality through an ability to ‘lock-in’ existing variation and reinforce itself by coercing urban spaces to compete against each other. I emphasise the importance of viewing neoliberalism as a dynamic and contradictory framework as opposed to a static ideology, and encourage this to be mapped onto space, with a specific focus on urban spaces in Britain. This mapping enables the evolution and perpetuation of neoliberal ideology to be unpacked, with its ever-increasing influence on the living standards of citizens being key to understanding the geographic unevenness in British society.

The post Competition and Contradiction in Neoliberal Britain’s Spatial Divide appeared first on Progress in Political Economy (PPE).

Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 05:30
The cult has been going mad over this: Donald Trump keeps sharing a photo on social media featuring a bright-red arrow pointing at the head of a bearded man at his civil fraud trial — claiming he is the son of the judge. The Post can now confirm that the pictured bespectacled, well-groomed target is not the kin of Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron. I should know — I’m the guy in the photo. Trump, 77, on Tuesday yet again signal-boosted the photo of me sitting a few rows into the court gallery along with an article by a fringe-right activist inexplicably claiming Engoron’s son is “financially benefitting” from being given a “prominent” seat at the trial. The post went out to Trump’s 6.52 million followers on the Truth Social app. It was the second time within a month that the former president shared the photo of me and a screenshot of the Nov. 7 article from Laura Loomer, an anti-Muslim activist who once described Islam as a “cancer” and has been banned from social media sites in the past.
Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 05:00

So, we’re watching The Bells of St. Mary’s for the fifth time—wholesome movie, so much more fun than hot jazz and lively bars—when some fella in the balcony starts hollering, “Hee-haw!” at me. “Is that man drunk, daddy?” whispers Zuzu, afraid. “No,” I sigh, sinking lower into my seat. “That’s just Sam Wainwright.”

George Bailey here. I love Sam Wainwright, I really do. But if he says, “Hee-haw!” one more time, I’m going to fucking kill him.

His speech at my father’s funeral? “Hee-haw.” My wedding toast? “Hee-haw.” His honeymoon night? “Hee-haw,” over and over again. I only know this because his fancy, fur-draped wife came crying to Mary and asked if that was normal. It is not normal.

Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 05:00

So, we’re watching The Bells of St. Mary’s for the fifth time—wholesome movie, so much more fun than hot jazz and lively bars—when some fella in the balcony starts hollering, “Hee-haw!” at me. “Is that man drunk, daddy?” whispers Zuzu, afraid. “No,” I sigh, sinking lower into my seat. “That’s just Sam Wainwright.”

George Bailey here. I love Sam Wainwright, I really do. But if he says, “Hee-haw!” one more time, I’m going to fucking kill him.

His speech at my father’s funeral? “Hee-haw.” My wedding toast? “Hee-haw.” His honeymoon night? “Hee-haw,” over and over again. I only know this because his fancy, fur-draped wife came crying to Mary and asked if that was normal. It is not normal.

Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 04:58
For most of the post-WW2 period, Washington’s strength rested on its ability to convince other nations that it was in their vital interests to see the United States prevail in its role as the global leader. Sometimes this was self-sabotaged by outbreaks of strident unilateralism, such as George W. Bush’s attack on Iraq in 2003. Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 04:56
The Albanese Government’s economic management has been very competent, but unfortunately also marked by a lack of ambition in tackling the challenges facing Australia. Halfway through the Albanese Government’s first term in office and at the end of the calendar year it is timely to review the Government’s economic management. Fiscal policy The key economic Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 04:55
Is there is a tipping point in Gaza when genocide will be unstoppable? The answer is tied to how long massacres run amok, and how deeply torture saturates children’s minds and imaginations. Each day nations pontificate over a permanent ceasefire is a massacre-torture day in Gaza. Claims of genocide in Gaza are being stoked, globally. Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 04:54
Gareth Evans’ review of Australia’s strategic relationship with the United States (“Why Australia can’t rely on the US to save it from China,” 12 December) provides a timely wake-up call on the dangers of Australia sleepwalking into what would be a catastrophic conflict with China. As Evans says, “a cutting-edge issue … is whether the Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 04:53
The NSW Court of Criminal Appeal has adopted the findings of the inquiry of the Honorable Thomas Bathurst AC KC into the convictions of Ms Kathleen Folbigg. As a result, her five criminal convictions from 2003 have been quashed and she has been acquitted. Notably Bathurst found ‘that there is an identifiable cause of the Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 04:51
Back in mid-October, a controversy broke out about a blast on the grounds of the al-Ahli Arab (Baptist) Hospital in Gaza City. Some quarters blamed it on Israel, but the latter’s defenders took the stance that Israel wouldn’t hit a hospital. It appears that it probably didn’t on that occasion, and that the blast can Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 04:50
When Israeli president Isaac Herzog described the assault on Gaza as a war “to save Western civilization, to save the values of Western civilization,” he wasn’t really lying. He was telling the truth — just maybe not quite in the way that he meant it. The demolition of Gaza is indeed being perpetrated in defense of western values, and Continue reading »
Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 04:00
Or will they help the GOP cut its losses and move on? Donald Trump came to America’s attention as a political actor back in 2011 when he became the self-appointed leading voice on the right insisting that President Barack Obama had been illegally elected president because he supposedly wasn’t born in the US. He made all the rounds of the news shows demanding that Obama produce his birth certificate even claiming that he sent people to Hawaii, Obama’s birthplace, telling the Today show audience “they cannot believe what they’re finding.” When Obama produced the birth certificate Trump claimed “an extremely reliable source” told him it was a forgery. This went on for years until Trump was elected president in 2016. And it was all a lie. Isn’t it so typically Trump that after all that it would be him who turned out to be disqualified from the presidential ballot? At least that’s what the Colorado Supreme Court ruled last night in a case that cites the 4th Amendment barring officers of the government from running if they’ve participated in an insurrection.
Created
Thu, 21/12/2023 - 03:35
‘Ideally controlled experiments’ tell us with certainty what causes what effects — but only given the right closures. Making appropriate extrapolations from (ideal, accidental, natural or quasi) experiments to different settings, populations or target systems, is not easy. ‘It works there’ is no evidence for ‘it will work here.’ Causes deduced in an experimental setting […]