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Week-end Wrap – Political Economy – February 4, 2024

by Tony Wikrent

 

Global power shift

Everything You’re Told About The Global Economy Is Wrong (interview)

Philip Pilkington, YouTube, via Naked Capitalism 02-02-2024] Grab a cup of coffee. Or two cups. Starting with the Houthis and moving on from there:

Summary of The Truth About The Global Economy | Aaron Bastani Meets Philip Pilkington

When Real Americans cut off their noses to spite their faces: Donna Knoche made her way up to the podium at the Johnson County Commission hearing on June 6, 2022, her new yellow shirt crisp and her voice steady. It wasn’t something she’d ever thought she’d have to do in her 93 years in the place her grandfather first homesteaded in the 1860s. Calmly setting aside her walker, she looked at the county commissioners arrayed to her left and began to speak. “I never in all my life thought I would stand up here to protect our property rights by being able to use our land legally for the best benefit of our family,” she said. To her right, scores of people were in line behind her. Many of them had other ideas.  Some implored the commissioners to vote to allow the so-called West Gardner plan, a utility-size array of solar panels, saying the county needed to commit to clean energy for their children’s future. But others were just as passionately opposed.

Détente would be good. Dialogue and diplomacy would be better. An end to US-led covert actions and cold wars would be better still. And what about an enduring peace that balances interests of all concerned? Such a peace, surely, is the end to which the détente statement, led by former Foreign Ministers Carr and Evans Continue reading »

IPAN, the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network, is inviting organisations and individuals throughout Australia to sign the open letter to the Prime Minister on Gaza and their freezing of funds to UNRWA. After the International Court of Justice’s ruling on South Africa’s case on 26 January, it is clear Israel is not halting its attacks Continue reading »

Former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam was a man with a mission. Many missions, obviously. But one maybe stood out above all others: the creation of a universal national healthcare system. Introduction by Croakey: On the 40th anniversary of Medicare, it is important to remember and learn from history, in order to help drive future reforms. Continue reading »

The election of the Albanese Labor government was met with a strong sense of optimism among people who had been lobbying for aged care reform for years. Finally, a government prepared to address the systemic issues that had plagued the sector since the Howard government neo-liberal reforms decades before. Alas, it was not to be. Continue reading »

We all have a responsibility to build trust, encourage a sense of belonging and a community of welcome and optimism. Ambitious New Year resolutions perhaps? But these goals, from the latest Scanlon social cohesion report are much more than just “nice to haves”. Trust has strong economic as well as social benefits. As I show Continue reading »

Current Australian defence policy involves close integration with the United States military in all areas, making an independent foreign policy impossible and ensuring Australia’s automatic involvement in US-instigated wars such as a war with China, our major trading partner. A policy of neutrality would free Australia from involvement in such disastrous military adventures and enable Continue reading »

The Israeli leadership is currently engaged in an undoubted genocide against the Palestinian population of Gaza. A complementary mopping up operation continues (if in slow motion) in the West Bank. During World War II, a certain genocide took place. More than one if one counts the attempted genocide by the Nazis, consciously on racist grounds, Continue reading »

Those following the U.S. Republican presidential race will have noted from the voter polls that the issue of foreign affairs ranks amongst the lowest or is the lowest of the priority concerns that the American public sees as critical to themselves and their country. A variety of polls held before the recently concluded nomination battles Continue reading »

China’s Belt and Road initiative (BRI) operates on a huge scale and is the focus of rarely halted negative coverage across many prominent outlets in the Global West. A new extended article in the leading US journal, Foreign Policy, however, provides a measured, informed exception to this general rule. Parag Khanna recently argued in a Continue reading »

JD Vance on This Week, calmly demonstrating his revolutionary MAGA zeal: As you can see, this man is unhinged. But the confident glibness of the slick liar is always unnerving. He’s dangerous.

During World War I, the Ottoman Empire collectively blamed the millions of Armenians in their territory for attacks by Armenian resistance fighters. Around 1M non-combatants were killed by the Ottoman military — in many cases, by forced marches through the Syrian desert without food and water. Denouncing this genocide doesn’t make you an Armenian resistance … Continue reading Taking sides in a genocide →

Tell ya what I’m gonna do School voucher salesmen. This is getting to be like an old “I Love Lucy” episode. The facts don’t matter. Taxpayers are lining up to be sheared. Friends like Jeff Byant (N.C.) and acquaintances like Jess Piper (Mo.) have hammered on efforts to privatize public schools for years. No matter what they’re called — school vouchers, charter schools, opportunity scholarships — they are schemes for separating public funding from public education and resegregating schools under the rubric of “choice.” For investors and wealthy parents, it’s about the money, either in profits or in tax breaks. Piper is right, BTW: So is Bryant. Charters that were once local and parent-organized are being squeezed out by the big-money boyz: The aim is to bust school budgets and, in the words of Grover Norquist, drown public education in the bathtub so the mandated not-for-profit spending can wind up in the for-profit world.

Religious politics are the greatest threat to democracy, more than social or economic inequality, lying politicians, or corruption, all of which are bad enough. Liberal democratic institutions exist to resolve conflicts of interests. Disputes over taxation, land use, farm subsidies, and so on, can be settled through argument and compromise between political parties. Sacred matters, […]

Joe Biden dominates South Carolina Democratic primary With over 95 percent of the vote counted in Saturday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina, President Joe Biden swept every county, garnering 96 percent of the vote overall and 95 percent or better in every county. As The New York Times put it, “There was not much drama Saturday night.” Biden himself was in Southern California, reports Politico. At the watch party at the state fairgounds in Columbia, people were headed for the doors less than an hour after poll closing. Self-help author Marianne Williamson edged out Rep. Dean Phillips (Minn.), with the pair earning a combined 2 percent of the vote. With the Biden vote so dominant, the race so uncompetitive, and the vote count so low (a mere 131 thousand), the Times attempts to draw comparisons to past primaries, but comparables are slim: The last time an incumbent Democratic president sought re-election, in 2012, President Barack Obama went unchallenged in South Carolina — and the state did not hold a primary.

In today's BCTV Daily Dispatch: Jeremy Renner, The Flash/Grant Gustin, Night Court, Doctor Who, Ninja Kamui, Charmed, Solar Opposites & more!

Wherever we turn, we witness the triumph of capital. Capital has prevailed everywhere: in warehouses, factories, offices, universities, public hospitals, the media – in space but also in the microcosm of genetic engineering. So, how do I dare claim that capitalism has been killed? By whom? The deliciously ironic answer is that capitalism was killed […]

The post Technofeudalism -a video essay summarising the book appeared first on Yanis Varoufakis.

The U.S. risks complicity with Israeli atrocities, experts say.

The post State Department Declares “Ethnic Cleansing” in Sudan but Won’t Say the Same About Israel’s War in Gaza appeared first on The Intercept.

At the one-year mark of the East Palestine derailment disaster, only one thing has changed: There’s more lobbying than ever to stop reforms.

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I don’t feel safe in this world no moreI don’t want to die in a nuclear warI want to sail away to a distant shore and make like an apeman -from “Apeman” by The Kinks, written by Ray Davies Don’t put that umbrella away…the forecast is cloudy, with a chance of cosmic debris: Meteorite hunters have successfully recovered fragments of an asteroid that impacted Earth over Berlin, Germany, on January 21st— and the space rocks could be very rare indeed. The 3.3-foot (1-meter) wide asteroid dubbed 2024 BX1 was spotted by NASA around 90 minutes before it hit Earth’s atmosphere. It burned up upon impact, exploding and creating a fireball seen by observers across Europe. Following the event, on January 22nd, intrepid meteorite hunters were out searching for fragments of Asteroid 2024 BX1. One team that hit pay dirt was led by SETI meteor scientist Peter Jenniskens; the crew found the second and third fragments to be uncovered.

Source - Patreon

Source - Patreon