Freedom Farter

In USA just now there's a wave of student demonstrations against their government's support of Israeli actions in Gaza. Polling suggests these demonstrators are representative of a majority of the US electorate (https://news.gallup.com/poll/642695/majority-disapprove-israeli-action-gaza). Yet as always when a schism opens up between the electorate and their self-anointed betters, some shadowy force must be behind it:

I listened to Naomi Klein's speech, it was good. MAGA types have also shown that their claimed commitment to free speech is a load of shite. In your neck of the woods, Abbott sent the police to arrest demonstrating university students. Even a Fox News journalist in attendance was arrested.

You know the "line goes up" economists? They point to their GDP graphs with the line going up in response to everything. Degrowth proponents challenge this orthodoxy that the line going up always means better lives for people. Their argument isn't that the line going up doesn't improve lives but rather that more lives could be improved with a different approach. I'm not a degrowth proponent because I don't understand it well enough. However, figures I admire are, for example Jason Hickel, so I don't dismiss it. Anyway my point originally was that the concept of degrowth is misunderstood (or lied about by neoliberals). It does not mean reducing productivity. It means potentially increasing productiviry but certainly re-orienting productivity around what's needed not just what creates the most profit. It's the opposite to malthusianism as its looking to better sustain people than current arrangements.

I don't think you understood my comment as you make the same point again that I made (or at least was aiming for). Degrowth posits that rising GDP is not inherently linked to an increase in living standards. The evidence for this is very strong. Proponents of degrowth suggest scrutinising the relentless pursuit of elite profits at the expense of the common folk's material needs. Bottle schemes and recycling in general are about inconveniencing and passing on costs to workers in order to maintain profit levels among major industries (eg. plastics). As I put, I am against this tendency of European Green parties. They refuse to promote radical economic arguments and instead come up with window dressing nonsense.

Ah, a bit like "catastrophically bald". Oh well, too late now, already done my big serious response.

Malthusianism is the idea that the number of humans should be limited. That's an idea from eco-fascism (for once, we can say literally the Nazis here, as they were eco-fascists). Folk are maybe confusing degrowth with malthusianism. Degrowth is about curbing unending capitalist expansion. It means scritinising things like the oil industry or the US military (the largest polluter of any single institution). My criticism of European Green parties in general is that they spend their time rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic when the enormous looming iceberg is the problem. They work on the assumption we can't do anything to alter macroeconomic arrangements so instead focus on small stuff that leaves elite interests intact and just inconveniences common folk. We can and should be demanding change to the macroeconomic arrangements.

Bellingham is possibly the second best player on the go right now, behind only his future teammate Mbappe. Trying to get the best out them both in the same team will be a challenge for Ancelotti. He's the ideal coach for it, though, as its what he's best known for. With his early 2000s Milan team he used that unfashionable narrow 4-4-2 diamond so he could fit two playmakers in the team, Pirlo at the base of the diamond and Rui Costa (later Kaka) at the tip. This season with Real Madrid he's again used a midfield diamond where Bellingham plays at the tip. However, the two forwards play more like wingers, leaving the centre forward space open for Bellingham to arrive into. On paper, that system actually seems perfect for Mbappe to walk into as one of the two wide forwards (probably taking Rodrygo's place). Mbappe has complained at PSG any time he's been forced to play as a centre forward, insisting instead that he's a winger or wide forward. An attack of Bellingham, Vinicius and Mbappe next season and beyond, amazing.

It was Pakistan, ie. Jinnah's Muslims, who did the Bangladeshi genocide. India wasn't involved.

Its an estimated $2B to Gaza not $9B: https://www.timesofisrael.com/house-approves-26-billion-in-aid-for-israel-and-gaza-under-major-spending-package/ Yes, $0 would have been preferable to $17B of military hardware and $2B towards humanitarian needs. Israel has used the weapons to abduct UNRWA workers and force false confessions from them. USA then used those false confessions to justify outlawing contributions to UNRWA, which is the UN agency embedded throughout Gaza. Now the World Food Programme instead has to hang about until this floating pier gets built from where they have to administer the aid (https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-aid-pier-us-military-e988256270fc0067d2f5524fd542a475). Israel uses the weapons to slaughter Gazans trying to collect the aid (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flour_massacre). Israel uses the weapons to murder aid workers trying to distribute the aid, such as they did with the three British men earlier this month. The fundamental point is that the food aid is only needed in the first place because of the destruction caused by the military aid. Gazans are starving because missiles fired from drones and fighter jets have destroyed their society's infrastructure. This is Israeli military doctrine to do so (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahiya_doctrine). If random idiots like me knew this was going to happen then you can be sure decision makers in Washington also knew yet they still chose to oversee and sponsor it all.

Nothing new, sadly. Even with the events of late 2013, folk forget the less than helpful role the EU and IMF played: ihttps://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-russia-deal-special-report/special-report-why-ukraine-spurned-the-eu-and-embraced-russia-idUSBRE9BI0DZ20131219/ Ukrainians had been getting a raw economic deal since 1991. I remember a Marcel Theroux (brother of Louis) documentary in 2012 on Kyiv's thousands of homeless children. That Ukrainians were already among the poorest people in Europe has made me all the angrier at the violence perpetrated against them since 2014 (furthered since 2022).

BBC report $26B but regardless of the exact amount it should be $0.

Biden now sending another $26B to Israel. "First as tragedy, then as farce" and all that. We're just watching oil being poured on this enormous fire of children's corpses over and over.

Tommy Sheridan is such a villain. How he unwittingly became the protagonist Murdoch needed to destroy the nascent socialist movement in Scottish electoral politics.

There's still people out there supporting this: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/17/world/video/shahed-young-girl-killed-gaza-israeli-airstrike-children-diamond-pkg-digvid