Mike Norman Economics

The bigger picture behind Official Washington’s hysteria over Russia, Syria and North Korea is the image of a decaying but dangerous American hegemon resisting the start of new multipolar order, explains Daniel Lazare.… Unipolarity will slink off to the sidelines while multilateralism takes center stage. Given that U.S. share of global GDP has fallen by better than 20 percent since 1989, a retreat is inevitable. America has tried to compensate by making maximum use of its military and...

Fake FB likes — another nonsense concern coupled with faux outrage.How about all the fake reviews on Amazon? Are they next?Moreover, this doesn't compare even slightly with the mass reach of highly centralized corporate media that manage the news cycle, conflate news with public relations (that is often political propaganda) and advertising, and even construct dubious if not false narrative that go way beyond "spin."The global corporate totalitarians are not going to be satisfied until they...

New book on living a good life in a good society.Radical Political EconomyNew Book: The Good Life Beyond Growth – New PerspectivesDavid Fields

Best Buy reportedly will stop selling Kaspersky Lab cybersecurity software due to fears that the company has links to the Russian government. The cyber world is headed toward national firewalls, silos, and cocooning. The open Internet is closing as paranoia takes over.Disclosure: I use Kaspersky Secure Connection (free version).Sputnik InternationalTop US Electronics Retailer Best Buy Stops Selling Kaspersky Lab Software

Among the disaffected is Venezuelan-American lawyer Eva Golinger, the author of The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela and self-described friend and advisor to Hugo Chávez. The day after Trump threatened to militarily intervene in Venezuela, Jeremy Scahill posted his interview with Eva Golinger on The Intercept, one reinforcing some corporate press distortions of Venezuela under President Maduro. Golinger hardly goes as far in this anti-Maduro campaign as Scahill, who more...

This is a very bad idea. The liberal way is counter rather than ban. Once censorship is normalized, drawing lines becomes an issue. Over time, the boundary line is extended. The Guardian World News by YouTube shuts down North Korean propaganda channels Olivia Solon in San Francisco SouthFront  URGENT: SouthFront’s Work Is Fully Blocked On Youtube (UPDATED) lkb22

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed a conciliatory solution toward resolving the crisis on the Korean peninsula, noting that the incorporation of North Korea into joint development projects across the region could soothe the frayed nerves caused by the region’s militarization and the ratcheting-up of tensions. Such a move would not only serve mutually-beneficial economic interests of the divided Korean peninsula and Russia, Putin noted, but would help build trust and strengthen...

You'll want to read the whole post. It's short.  Visual Capitalist2,000 Years of Economic History in One ChartJeff Desjardins

An international campaign by capitalist politicians and media has been unleashed against president Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuelan government. It has been used by Labour’s Blairista right wing to try to weaken Jeremy Corbyn. In Spain, the spectre of Venezuela has been held up as a warning of what a Podemos-led government would mean. The close links of Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias to Hugo Chávez regime in the past has facilitated this idea. Across Latin America this campaign has been conducted...

I posted recently on the increasing influence of corporate money in academia, specifically the new Marriner Eccles center funded by the Koch brothers at the University of Utah. The piece by David V. Johnson in the Baffler on this subject is worth reading. As he notes, the new breed of private money goes beyond what they used to do in the past, trying to directly influence what kind of research, the curriculum and what ideas should be disseminated, and, indirectly who should be hired and...