The Suffocation of Democracy
by Christopher R. Browning
‘…In threatening trade wars with allies and adversaries alike, Trump justifies increased tariffs on our allies on the specious pretext that countries like Canada are a threat to our national security. He combines his constant disparagement of our democratic allies with open admiration of authoritarians. His naive and narcissistic confidence in his own powers of personal diplomacy and his faith in a handshake with the likes of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un recall the hapless Neville Chamberlain (a man in every other regard different from Trump). Fortunately the US is so embedded in the international order it created after 1945, and the Republican Party and its business supporters are sufficiently alarmed over the threat to free trade, that Trump has not yet completed his agenda of withdrawal, though he has made astounding progress in a very short time….’
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2018/10/25/suffocation-of-democracy/
The point of a space elevator is that it would be a long term investment that makes the EU hardwired to service earth's space needs. It would require a massive amount of money and global cooperation. But it is not a 'frill' but an essential contribution to getting us off this rock. All the above ideas are about getting individuals into space for a period of time – this is about building a motorway to the stars to be used by all.
Europe can do this.
/jd
My Great-Grandfather the Bundist
by Molly Crabapple
‘…Founded in 1897 in Vilna (Vilnius in modern-day Lithuania), and reaching its height in interwar Poland, the Bund was a sometimes-clandestine political party whose tenets were humane, socialist, secular, and defiantly Jewish. Bundists fought the Tsar, battled pogroms, educated shtetls, and ultimately helped lead the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Though the Bund was largely obliterated by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, the group’s opposition to Zionism better explains their absence from current consciousness. Though the Bund celebrated Jews as a nation, they irreconcilably opposed the establishment of Israel as a separate Jewish homeland in Palestine. The diaspora was home, the Bund argued. Jews could never escape their problems by the dispossession of others. Instead, Bundists adhered to the doctrine of do’ikayt or “Hereness.” Jews had the right to live in freedom and dignity wherever it was they stood….’
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/10/06/my-great-grandfather-the-bundist/
Last surviving prosecutor at Nuremberg trials says Trump’s family separation policy is ‘crime against humanity’
‘…The lawyer said it was “painful” when he heard about how the Trump administration had separated more than 2,000 children from their families after they had crossed the US-Mexico border.[….] “We list crimes against humanity in the Statute of the International Criminal Court. We have ‘other inhumane acts designed to cause great suffering’. What could cause more great suffering than what they did in the name of immigration law? It’s ridiculous,” the prosecutor of war criminals said regarding the family separation policy…’
my video
/jd
Az Európai Baloldal szolidáris azokkal hajléktalanokkal – 2018.10.14
Egy mondat. Demonstráció a hajléktalanságban élők védelmében – 2018.10.14. . .Európai Baloldal Barátai: Az Európai Baloldal szolidáris azokkal hajléktalanokkal,akiket a kormány már fizikailag is üldöz, és mindenkit a szegények támogatására kérünk.Ők is egyenjogú állampolgárok, akik többet érdemelnek az államtól.Rövid távon a szociális lakások rendszerét kell kiépíteni.Hoszzabb távon véget kell vetni a neoliberális gazdaságpolitikának, az emberi jogokat veszélyeztető Fidesz-rezsimnek.
Publiée par A MI IDŐNK sur Mardi 16 octobre 2018
‘…For months in war-torn Yemen, some of America’s most highly trained soldiers worked on a mercenary mission of murky legality to kill prominent clerics and Islamist political figures.
Their target that night: Anssaf Ali Mayo, the local leader of the Islamist political party Al-Islah. The UAE considers Al-Islah to be the Yemeni branch of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE calls a terrorist organization. Many experts insist that Al-Islah, one of whose members won the Nobel Peace Prize, is no terror group. They say it’s a legitimate political party that threatens the UAE not through violence but by speaking out against its ambitions in Yemen.
The mercenaries’ plan was to attach a bomb laced with shrapnel to the door of Al-Islah’s headquarters, located near a soccer stadium in central Aden, a key Yemeni port city. The explosion, one of the leaders of the expedition explained, was supposed to “kill everybody in that office.”…’
Yeah, no one cares really - but the MSM sure love to talk about their friend Jamal Kashoggi, don't they?
/jd
Saudi war on Yemen: World’s Worst Famine in a Century could Claim 13 Million
‘…Yemen is a country of some 29 million persons, but over a third of them are at risk of starvation if Saudi and UAE bombing campaigns continue. Lise Grand, the United Nations coordinator for Yemen, has warned that the world has only 3 months to halt the slide toward catastrophe.
[….] The war has so far taken at least 10,000 lives, and has displaced millions and left most of the country food insecure (i.e. not yet starving but one paycheck away from it)…’
https://www.juancole.com/2018/10/famine-century-bombing.html
When will people learn that 'fiscal discipline' is a bait and switch ideology?
/jd
Under the Fog of Kavanaugh, House Passes $3.8 Trillion More in Tax Cuts
‘…September 28, 2018
With attention fixed on the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a new $3.1 trillion tax cut on Friday. The vote was 220 to 191, including three Democrats [….] The House’s new bill takes effect starting in 2025, and would add $600 billion to the national debt within the next decade, and then $3.2 trillion in the 10 years after that…’
http://fortune.com/2018/09/28/house-3-8-trillion-tax-cut-passes