Новости за 03.08.2018

We are supposedly seven years into a “recovery” from the global economic collapse that commenced in 2008. The latest evidence offered to promote this oft-peddled mantra is that U.S. gross domestic product showed a strong uptick for the second quarter of 2018, an annualized rate of 4.1 percent, nearly double that of the first quarter. More

In the spring of 1457, a gruesome murder took place in the French village of Savigny-sur-Etang. A five-year-old boy had been killed and his body partially consumed. A local family was accused of this frightful crime by local residents who claimed to have witnessed the murder. The seven suspects, a mother and her six children, were soon tracked down by local authorities, who discovered them still stained by the boy’s blood. They were arrested, indicted on charges of infanticide and held in the local jail for trial. Читать дальше...

When Donald Trump flubs through ignorance, incompetence, or poor judgment – that would be nearly all the time – he insists that he has not flubbed at all; that, quite to the contrary, he accomplished wonders. Whoever questions his words is spreading “fake news” and is an “enemy of the people.” Who knows if he More

Q: What do the following wildly diverse people and institutions have in common: MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Fox News’ Shepard Smith, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, The New York Times and The Weekly Standard, The National Review and the Daily Kos? A: All agree that Donald Trump’s July 16 meeting More

With patented angst, Noam Chomsky opined on President Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua to an agreeing Amy Goodman: “But there’s been a lot of corruption, a lot of repression. It’s autocratic, undoubtedly.” Earlier in their DemocracyNow! interview, the main talking points were established via a video clip of a dissident former official from Ortega’s Sandinista Party: Ortega’s More

Hindsight is unfair – but it might tell the truth. First, Donald Trump proclaims Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, thus depriving the Palestinians of their capital in the east of the city. The Palestinians are appalled. Mahmoud Abbas says he will no longer talk to the United States. So Trump rages that “we pay More

Another day, another person of color killed by police officers, and another day and another prosecutor does not indict. Is this merely a problem of blatant racism or is something else going on? Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman was correct in not indicting the officers who killed Thurman Blevins. The reason is simple–he could never More

PolyMet is trying the Donald Trump approach to mining here in Minnesota. Their philosophy: I’ve never mined before, I must be better than the other guys. PolyMet passed the longest environment review in Minnesota’s history, according to their own website. Which begs two worrisome questions. 1. If the mining was safe, why did the review More

Since the earliest days on the campaign trail, it has never been in doubt who Trump and his team have had in their sights. “Iran is the biggest destabilizing force in the Middle East and its policies are contrary to our interests,” Defence Secretary Mattis told his Senate confirmation hearing, having previously claimed the country More

The world of academia is starting to pick up on the concept that humanity is unknowingly cruising on a train ride to doomsday, a surefire encounter with collapse of society based upon climate crises brought on by exponential climate change. The depth of the problem: It’s inevitable and inescapable. Nonetheless, people do not want to More

In this episode of The Hudson Report, we speak with Michael Hudson about the implications of the flattening yield curve, the possibility of another global financial crisis, and public banking as an alternative to the current system. ‘The Hudson Report’ is a Left Out weekly series with the legendary economist Michael Hudson. Every week, we More

Countries of the NATO military alliance have been ordered by President Trump to increase their spending on weapons, and the reasons for his insistence they do so are becoming clearer. It’s got nothing to do with any defense rationale, because the Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, has admitted that “we don’t see any imminent More

In July, a 3-year-old male jaguar, Valerio, at New Orleans’ Audubon Zoo escaped and fatally mauled four trapped alpacas, one emu and one fox who were held in other displays. Valerio bit a hole in steel fencing and zoo officials vowed to install stronger materials. The fact is, according to Fear of the Animal Plant: More

The “democratic socialist” movement spawned by Bernie Sanders’s 2016 campaign has led to an interesting development. Highly educated and self-described socialists in the academy have written erudite articles making the Marxist case for voting Democratic. Even if they are wrong, I am impressed with the scholarly prowess deployed on behalf of obvious casuistry. These articles More

Apparently, two years out isn’t too early to start speculating on who the hapless Democrats may run for president in 2020. Let’s remember that in the last seven elections, they have only been able to elect two presidents (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama), despite only losing the popular vote once (George Bush’s second term, and More

It’s no surprise that the public schools of New York City have become resegregated. It’s happening all over the U.S., so why should the Big Apple be any different? Read Jonathan Kozol’s The Shame of the Nation for a superior assessment of where public schooling is headed in the U.S. in terms of equality and access. Kozol More

Here we are in the middle of the second year of Donald Trump’s presidency and if there’s one thing we know by now, it’s that the leader of the free world can create an instant reality-TV show on geopolitical steroids at will. True, he’s not polished in his demeanor, but he has an unerring way More

Anyone who has to consult Pew or some other national opinion poll to discover that the vast majority of Millennials and a healthy majority of Gen Xers “disapprove” of the Trump Administration probably doesn’t know anyone younger than fifty-four. The country needs to start taking these voices seriously. Political scientists slice and dice the electorate More

Despite strong continued support for President Trump in rural America, farmers fear they will bear the brunt of the retaliatory tariffs from the President’s trade war.  Farm country can ill afford it: in February, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) predicted 2018 crop profits would hit a 12-year low. Dairy farmers’ prices have fallen 30% More

People sometimes ask me what religion Japanese people practice.  I usually end up saying that Japanese people aren’t very religious at all.  But paradoxically, if you go to Japan, you encounter huge shrines at tourists’ spots and there are numerous smaller ones across the country in many forms.  You visit a Japanese household, you might More

Last month, a letter sent to CIA Director, Gina Haspel, was leaked publicly and spread across social media. The letter was written by the former leader of the Malaysian External Intelligence Organization (MEIO), Datuk Hasanah Ab Hamid. She wrote the letter on May 4th, which was five days before the national election that resulted in defeat for More

On August 7th, 1970 Jonathan Jackson took out a couple guns in the Marin County Courthouse and attempted to free members of the Soledad Brothers (revolutionary prisoners falsely accused of killing a prison guard) who were on trial in the courtroom. The defendants joined Jackson in taking the judge and others hostage, commandeering a prison More

In elementary school they taught us the names of inventors. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, Robert Fulton the steamboat, Alexander Graham Bell the telephone, and Thomas Alva Edison the electric light bulb. Nowadays we rarely know the names of the inventors of modern technology—think biotechnology, nanotechnology, pharmaceutical technology, safety technology. Not every breakthrough is More

In elementary school they taught us the names of inventors. Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin, Robert Fulton the steamboat, Alexander Graham Bell the telephone, and Thomas Alva Edison the electric light bulb. Nowadays we rarely know the names of the inventors of modern technology—think biotechnology, nanotechnology, pharmaceutical technology, safety technology. Not every breakthrough is More

A decade since the global financial meltdown, social and economic decay continues with regional conflicts creating tension around the world. The panic of 08 unraveled the demise of Western liberal democracy, a model of governance managed through control of the markets. The global crisis of legitimacy brought by the breakdown of the system exposed the More