Mike Norman Economics

Contemporary liberals are temperamentally conservative — and what they want to conserve is a morally bankrupt political order.,,, A characteristic of neoliberalism? Maybe I was predisposed to democratic socialism; I always considered myself to be “on the Left,” even as a teenager. In any case, it’s become clear in retrospect that watching the liberal class respond to events over the past decade has been a powerful stimulus in my politicization. Which is to say, I didn’t acquire radical...

A major aspect of the CIA’s detention and interrogation operations has been purposefully hidden from view, primarily due to secrecy guidelines that make it illegal for anyone “read into” the program to reveal even its very existence. Recent declassified documents make clear that there was not one, but two CIA torture programs. These programs used different interrogation techniques, responded to different bureaucracies within the CIA, and had very different levels of oversight. This...

Colonialism and "the white man's burden." The story of the East India Company and how transnational corporate totalitarianism began. The rest is history that is still unfolding in accordance with this paradigm that has been adapted to neoliberal globalization and how capitalism is uplifting the masses, in particular those who are not of European descent. There is a story that is commonly told in Britain that the colonisation of India - as horrible as it may have been - was not of any...

Zimbabwe!Tim Worstall doubles down.(Tim covers himself in the concluding paragraphs though.)Continental TelegraphThe Problem With Modern Monetary Theory – Explained For Children So MMT Enthusiasts Can Understand Tim Worstall

The economic forecast has been looking gloomy for some time, but last week the IMF warned that “an economic downturn lurks somewhere over the horizon”. Unfortunately, while workers have endured a lost decade since the 2008 financial crisis, the economy has not been repaired in that time. So without decisive action – and soon – there are five reasons why we should fear another global recession. 5. Lessons from 2008 still haven’t been learned Workers are all too familiar with...

It's very long and detailed, well, Mark Blyth is a university/ college professor and so there's a lot of research here. Now we know the type of work that gets done behind the scenes.How the  Conservatives messed up our ecomony, and yet millions of people vote for them believing they know what's best for the country. ABSTRACT Using newly declassified documents from the British Public Records Office, we argue that the finance-dependent growth regime that typified the UK economy in the...

FiveThirtyEight editor-in-chief Nate Silver, a fairly reliable establishment loyalist, tweeted today about the new Russia report saying “If you wrote out a list of the most important factors in the 2016 election, I’m not sure that Russian social media memes would be among the top 100. The scale was quite small and there’s not much evidence that they were effective.” “For instance, this story makes a big deal about a (post-election) Russian social media disinformation campaign on Bob...

The Grayzone entered the carefully concealed offices of a covert, British government-backed propaganda mill that is at the center of an international scandal the mainstream media refuses to touch. The entire extremely shady enterprise, as Miller explained, is an elaborate front for the British military-intelligence apparatus. Its covert coordination with friendly politicians and mainstream journalists recalls the Cold War-era intrigue known as Operation Mockingbird. That scandal involved...

Russia Insider All of Europe’s Powerful Countries Are Effectively Leaderless, EU Adrift - Russia’s Top Anchor (Dmitry Kiselyov) Michael Quinn Spiegel OnlineYellow Vests Protests: If Macron Fails, Europe Fails A Commentary by Henrik Enderlein, president and professor of political economy at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin as well as the director of the Jacques Delors Institute SouthFrontUS Coast Guard Turns Down Arctic Exercise Because 40-year-old Icebreaker Might Break Down And...

More humor. Did you know that Russia is now weaponizing humor. The BBC just said so. Moon of AlabamaHow Putin's Russia Weaponizes XSee alsoCaitlin Johnstone — Rogue JournalistDon’t Laugh : It’s Giving Putin What He WantsCaitlin Johnstone See also   Russian President Vladimir Putin is surpassing dashing Japanese heartthrobs in 2019 calendar sales thanks to an unexpected legion of young fans.The calendar, exclusively sold by popular Japanese chainstore Loft, has reportedly surpassed all...