Mike Norman Economics

A very interesting post.The author fails to discuss the the situation with China, however, perhaps owing to limited scope.  The Chinese situation is interesting in that prior to Deng's reforms, China was a country dominated by poor peasants. The way that the contemporary Chinese government is dealing this is is building cities and requiring people to move to them. There is apparently not much resistance owing to the extreme poverty of the countryside. This was inevitable in the move to...

The world birthed in the near extinction of one-fifth of humanity still exists, in the social relations bequeathed to the Americas by conquistadors and enslavers. “In Latin America, U.S. influence means White Power.” The events in Bolivia lay bare the central role that racial subjugation has always played in the “New World,” a hemisphere whose “discovery” by Europeans resulted — within the span of only 50 years — in the death by genocide and pandemic of fully a fifth of the Earth’s human...

Book review. Many MMT points.Brave New EuropeThe Debt Delusion by John WeeksMathew D. Rose

In Bolivia, the military, police, and right-wing extremists have carried out a coup against the elected government. They intend to remain in power by violently suppressing the country's indigenous and poor [that comprise the majority of the population and electorate]. Short summary to pass on.JacobinThe Far-Right Coup in BoliviaMatt Wilgress

Since late 2001, the United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $6.4 Trillion through Fiscal Year 2020 in budgetary costs related to and caused by the post-9/11 wars—an estimated $5.4 Trillion in appropriations in current dollars and an additional minimum of $1 Trillion for US obligations to care for the veterans of these wars through the next several decades. 2 The mission of the post-9/11 wars, as originally defined, was to defend the United States against...

At Wednesday’s debut of the impeachment hearings there was one issue upon which both sides of the aisle seemed to agree, and it was a comic-book caricature of reality.House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff led off the proceedings with this:  “In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation’s embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire…”  Five years ago, when Ukraine first came into the news, those...

This is an excellent backgrounder. But where did the American deep state come from? Has it always been there?In fact, the evolution of the deep state (and this choice of term, “evolution” as opposed to “creation”, will be explained later) is — some might say ironically — found in a nearly 140-year old anti-corruption “reform” measure; one that was explicitly focused upon depoliticizing the civilian component of the United States government.... The architects of the reform also failed to...

G Carchedi and I have been working on some new empirical work, trying to gauge which countries are the imperialist ones and how much value they are able to extract from the dominated or periphery (we prefer those names rather than ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’, which is too geographical). We emphasise that we are looking at the economic foundations of imperialism, not the political aspects or the superstructure if you like, ie the political control by imperialist countries over the...

This dog enjoys his walks.Connor Cassidy said that the pug appeared to being enjoying this unusual style of walkies and was a little bamboozled how it managed to hold on. When he asked the man why he was carrying his dog in such an unusal way, he told him it was the pug's preference. Connor said: "I've seen him a few times and we were talking to him. "I asked him why he did it and he said 'that's just where the dog likes to be'. Short video Daily Record ...

Michael D Higgins says climate change is most pressing issue facing the global community The world needs to move away from the prevailing neo-liberal economic model to one linking ecology, economy and society if humankind is to successfully address climate change, according to President Michael D Higgins. The President said climate change is the most pressing issue facing people as a global community and the window of opportunity to act and address it in a meaningful way is closing...