Mike Norman Economics

The walls are coming down in Finland’s schools – but not just the physical barriers between classrooms. Also going are divisions between subjects and age ranges, and students have more of a say over what will be learnt than children in many other countries.According to CityLab, an architecture website, the country is undergoing an ambitious national redesign of its 4,800 schools. Some 57 new schools began construction in 2015 and 44 in 2016. Others are being refurbished using open-plan...

RT was thereby forced to reveal some details of the 2016 negotiations during which Twitter representatives made an exclusive multi-million dollar advertising proposal to spend big during the US presidential election, which was turned down. Having since been banned, and in order to set the record straight, we are publishing Twitter’s presentation and details of the offer in full. RTTwitter’s multi-million dollar US election pitch to RT revealed in FULL

But the Iran decision, taken despite personal appeals from France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s Theresa May, has changed the calculus in Europe, according to diplomats, politicians and analysts.No longer is there an underlying confidence that Europe can muddle through three more years of Trump without fear of major, and possibly lasting, disruptions to the relationship. Nor is there faith that Trump, when the stakes are high, will listen to what his advisers and...

MICHAEL ROBERTS: I think the IMF, and that clip shows it, is worried that the huge increase in inequality of income and wealth in many countries, like the US and the UK, over the last 20 or 30 years is reaching such extreme levels that there is serious danger of social and political unrest. The great status quo of globalization and neoliberal policies and international activity in the direction of big business is being threatened by this high inequality. Their economists have now started to...

The Chilean coup is one of many CIA interventions into the affairs of Latin America and the former European colonies in Africa and Asia after World War II. It is by now well known that the Agency “occasionally undermined democracies for the sake of fighting communism,” as Mary von Aue writes at Vice, throughout the Cold War years. But years before some of its most aggressive initiatives, the CIA “developed several guises to throw money at young, burgeoning writers, creating a cultural...

I read an article years ago written by a physicist who said that the US Missile Defense Shield was a giant scam and wouldn't work. As the article is over ten years old I never posted it here because technology would have moved on from then, but no it hasn't, says Philip  Geraldi. Even the contractors who make the missile defense shield proudly boast that it will hit 97% of missiles coming into the USA. Gee! If Russia sends over a hundred missiles three will get through and blow the US to...

Brian Becker and John Kiriakou of Sputnik Radio's Loud & Clear spoke to journalist and author Max Blumenthal and former Assistant Attorney General of the United States Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer, to discuss Twitter's announcement.... Sputnik InternationalTwitter’s RT Ad Ban Violates First Amendment - Former Deputy Attorney General

[embedded content] Superb commentary by Max Keiser. The Saudi's also want to de-dollarize.Beijing is ready to step up the game. Soon China will launch a crude oil futures contract priced in yuan. This means that Russia – as well as Iran, the other key node of Eurasia integration – may bypass US sanctions by trading energy in their own currencies, or in yuan. Inbuilt in the move is a true Chinese win-win; the yuan - according to some - will be fully convertible into gold on both the...

In the past, America has witnessed “McCarthyism” from the Right and even complaints from the Right about “McCarthyism of the Left.” But what we are witnessing now amid the Russia-gate frenzy is what might be called “Establishment McCarthyism,” traditional media/political powers demonizing and silencing dissent that questions mainstream narratives.... It's about Establishment control of the narrative that establishes consensus reality. Consortium NewsRussia-gate Breeds ‘Establishment...

“The general feeling is that they’ll get there before us.” Xi Jinping said they were going to focus on innovating. The world will soon see whether "the Chinese" are only good at copying, as critics charge. This was said of Japan as the country recovered after WWII.And affordability is no problem. It doesn’t necessarily mean that their scientists are better,” McClatchy reported Martin Laforest, a physicist at University of Waterloo as saying. “It’s just that when they say, ‘We need a...