In The Last of the Wine, two young Athenians, Alexias and Lysis, compete in the palaestra,
China is applying more pressure on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, the collective name for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and International Development Association (IDA), for debt relief to the Global South. This means applying pressure on the United States and shows it to be the hypocrite that the Global South knew it to be.
Well obviously, the one thing the characterizes the new global World Majority order is a mixed economy where other countries will do what China has done. They will make money and land, meaning housing, and employment into public rights and public utilities instead of commodifying them and privatizing them and financializing them as has occurred in the West. So we’re really talking about, in order to move away from the dollar-NATO-sphere, we’re not really talking about just one national currency or another.
It’s not going to be a question of the Chinese yen and the Russian ruble and other currencies replacing the dollar. It’s a whole different economic system.
That’s the one thing that is not permitted in the mainstream media to discuss. They’re still on the “There Is No Alternative” Margaret Thatcher slogan, instead of talking about: What is the alternative going to be?
Because obviously things cannot last the way they are now. — Michael Hudson @ How China Is Breaking The Colonial Effects Of Western Lending by Moon of Alamaba
The emerging new always both frightens and inspires the fading old. History is evidence of that unity of opposites. The old gets pushed away even as bitter denials of that reality surge. The emerging new world economy displays just such contradictions. Four major developments can illustrate them and underscore their interactions. — The Emerging New World Economy by Richard D Wolff, and provided by Economy for All
- First, the neoliberal globalizing paradigm is now the old. Economic nationalism is the new.
- Second, over recent decades, the intensifying problems of neoliberal globalization forced capitalism to make adjustments. As neoliberal globalization lost mass support in capitalism’s old centers, governments took on powers and made more economic interventions to sustain the capitalist system.
- Third, over recent decades, the US empire peaked and began its decline. It thus follows every other empire’s (Greek, Roman, Persian and British) classic pattern of birth, evolution, decline, and death.
- Fourth, the US empire’s decline raises the question of what comes next as the decline deepens.
Patriotic Republicans who wave the flag against perceived enemies are war addicts under the thumb of the military/security complex and thus incapable of pursuing peace. The One China policy has been US foreign policy since the Nixon administration a half century ago. Under the US One China policy Taiwan is part of China. But if China moves to prevent a breakaway Taiwan, as Republicans did to prevent a breakaway Confederacy, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee says the US Congress would authorize a direct military confrontation with China and put boots on the ground. In other words, Republicans support the National Security State uber alles. We see the same idiocy in Republicans’ threat to send the US military into Mexico to go to war against the drug cartels. — Some Comments on the Inanities of Our Time by Paul Craig Roberts
It’s pun time again.
I noticed we Americans use a lot of French words regularly, such as hors d’oeuvres.
And that’s just for starters…
Plus a meme that had me laughing out loud because I can relate.
So I got my concealed gun permit yesterday…
…and went over to the local Bass Pro Shop to get a small 9mm pistol for home protection.
When I was ready to pay for the gun and bullets, the cashier said “Strip down, facing me.”
Making a mental note to complain to the NRA about the gun control wackos running amok, I did just as she had instructed.
When the hysterical shrieking and alarms finally subsided, I found out she was referring to how I should place my credit card in the card reader!
I’ve been asked to shop elsewhere in the future. They need to make their instructions to seniors a little clearer.
I still don’t think I looked that bad.
Washington is going to have a hard time explaining how the biggest U.S. intelligence leak in a decade may have been committed by a 21-year-old airman whose role — “cyber transport systems journeyman” — required a high-school degree, a driver’s license and up to 18 months of on-the-job-training. — U.S. left red-faced over 21-year-old’s alleged tie to intelligence leak by Peter Martin and Courtney Mcbride @ Bloomberg