Новости за 26.07.2018

There comes a time in the decline of an empire when--in its hubris, its arrogance--it decouples from reason and blindly blunders toward its fate in a ludicrous ugly trance of stupidity.  To paraphrase Walter Cronkite--we are there.  Trump makes his one positive, even useful, gesture as President, and the decayed corpse of the Democratic Party bursts its cerements with a stinking roar of horror. More

I have a student, call him Karl, a self-described Marxist. Karl has read the first two volumes of Capital, and, given the clunky translations I’ve seen, that’s no mean feat. Within an hour of meeting him, Karl insisted on telling me that capitalism was doomed because it “fundamentally exploited the masses.” Our relationship developed through More

The head of the Arab Joint List Alliance at the Israeli Knesset (Parliament), Ayman Odeh, described the passing of the racist Jewish Nation-state Law as “the death of our democracy.” Did Odeh truly believe that, prior to this law, he had lived in a true democracy? 70 years of Israeli Jewish supremacy, genocide, ethnic cleansing, More

At the NATO summit earlier this month, Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary general of NATO, was forced to publicly praise Donald Trump’s leadership. Mr. Stoltenberg is almost certainly a very intelligent hardworking man. That is virtually a prerequisite for a person in his position. By contrast, Donald Trump is the most ignorant ill-prepared person ever to More

A new book, Bernie or Bust, tells the story of a small group of electoral activists that made a big difference. They were motivated by the fall of democracy and the coming environmental catastrophe. But, the key to their success was that they actually had a political strategy not simply a moral or ideological position. Bernie or Bust More

I would rather be lynched than live to be mistreated and not be allowed to say ‘I don’t like it.’ — Rosa Parks In 1955, the same year Emmett Till two other blacks were lynched, Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks decided, separately, they would not take racism sitting down. Others followed their lead, and the More

What would we ever do for kicks without President Donald Trump pressing our buttons? Without Trump’s pathetic, childish, provoking trash talk tweets? Or the President’s blatant, treasonous disparagement of our democracy just a forced wink and a phony smile away from Russia’s creepy, ruthless dictator? It’s been three hellish, Twilight Zone-on-an-endless-loop years of this two-bit snakeoil More

When it comes to control of the populace, what are the imperialist, anti-imperialist or subimperialist characteristics of the BRICS network of countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa? Can the BRICS deliver progressive outcomes – as some of its proponents claim – or not? I am interested in this question from a surveillance and More

The pundits and politicians generally take it for granted that President Trump lacks a coherent foreign policy. They believe that he acts solely out of spite, caprice, and political opportunism — lashing out at U.S. allies like Germany’s Angela Merkel and England’s Theresa May only to embrace authoritarian rulers like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North More

The Democrat-led anti-Trump “Resistance” and its numerous media mouthpieces have been promoting their “Russia hacked the election” narrative for two years. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi fired the biggest recent salvo in this campaign after Trump invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to visit Washington. “The notion that President Trump would invite a tyrant to Washington More

President Trump has triggered what could be “the largest trade war in economic history,” the Chinese Commerce Ministry warns. Trump is threatening tariffs on $500 billion in Chinese goods, virtually all of our imports from China. He’s also hit Mexico, Canada and our European allies with punitive tariffs. This week, the president of the European More

Those familiar with the debate around genetically modified organisms (GMOs) may be forgiven for thinking that science alone can solve the world’s food problems. The industry asserts that GMOs are vital if the world is to increase agricultural productivity and we are going to feed a growing global population. There is also the distinct impression that the GMO More

It may well go down as one of the most appalling conferences in the history of the International Political Science Association. The World Congress is one of those hot air events that ventilates academic views in limited circles while shutting them off from actual discussion in the broader community.  In this setting, academics with the oxymoronic More