M.K. Bhadrakumar , - Alternet/Independent Media Institute
Stephan: There is a major geopolitical transition occurring, the biggest since the end of World War II. As this article says, "The heart of the matter is that the economic center of gravity in the world order and the ensuing global power equation is inexorably shifting away from the West, while on the other hand, there is no longer a “West” that is united behind principles, values, and policies."
Perhaps because 64% of Americans have never been outside U.S. borders, neither average people nor the politicians they elect understand or care much about this, but it is a huge change with many implications. And it is being exacerbated by the indifference and incompetence of criminal Trump and his minions. Watch the news this transition is going to affect your life in many ways.
U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo
Credit: U.S. State Department
The annual Munich Security Conference that took place February 14-16 this year turned out to be an iconic event, drawing comparison with the one held in the same Bavarian city on February 10, 2007, where in a prophetic speech Russian President Vladimir Putin had criticized the world order characterized by the United States’ global hegemony and its “almost uncontained hyper use of force—military force—in international relations.”
If Putin’s 2007 Munich speech was prescient about an incoming new Cold War and the surge of tensions in Russia’s relations with the West, 13 years later, at the event this year, we witnessed that the transatlantic ties that evolved through the two world wars in the last century and blossomed into a full-fledged alliance system have reached a crossroads.
Deep cracks have appeared in the transatlantic relationship. In an extraordinary opening address, German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, an éminence grise in European diplomacy, accused Washington of rejecting “the very concept of an […]
1 Comment
Marcia Gibson, Investigator Scientist MRC/CSO Social & Public Health Sciences Unit, University of Glasgow - Raw Story
Stephan: Universal basic income. There are few topics that create as much political hysteria as basic income, but what do we actually know about basic income programs? What is the data? What actually happens? Here is some real data; it may surprise you.
The idea of giving everybody an unconditional, regular income has become increasingly popular in the last few years, partly because employment has become less secure and people fear that increasing automation may cause job losses across many sectors.
There are many arguments for and against basic income. Some are concerned with fairness and justice, but many are based on competing ideas about the potential effects. Some argue people would stop working and become dependent on payments, while others believe it would free people to spend time on useful activities like volunteering or caring, and that many wouldn’t work less because they wished to earn more or simply enjoyed it.
The only way to find out is to run pilot studies and measure the effects. To be sure that the effects are accurate, any study would have to meet as many of the criteria for a full basic income as possible: payments must be unconditional, cover the basic cost of living, and not be affected by other income. It is likely that effects would be different […]
No Comments
Stephan: I began SR many years ago because friends and acquaintances, knowing of my intense interest in actual data began to write me during the Reagan era asking if what the President and other Republicans were saying was factually accurate (it usually was not, Reagan and his minions were terrible liars). But the disinformation of the Reagan era was bush league compared to what is happening today. Then there was no social media, no Twitter, no Facebook, no Instagram. Today at least half of what I see on the net is disinformation, either deliberate or reposted out of ignorance. And when it comes to climate change the disinformation and outright propaganda level is even higher
Here some actual data that makes this point.
Credit: Omar Marques / SOPA Images / LightRocket/Getty
The social media conversation over the climate crisis is being reshaped by an army of automated Twitter bots, with a new analysis finding that a quarter of all tweets about climate on an average day are produced by bots, the Guardian can reveal.
The stunning levels of Twitter bot activity on topics related to global heating and the climate crisis is distorting the online discourse to include far more climate science denialism than it would otherwise.
An analysis of millions of tweets from around the period when Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement found that bots tended to applaud the president for his actions and spread misinformation about the science.
The study of Twitter bots and climate was undertaken by Brown University and has yet to be published. Bots are a type of software that can be directed to autonomously tweet, retweet, like or direct message on Twitter, under the guise of a human-fronted account.
“These findings suggest a substantial impact of […]
No Comments
Stephan: [caption id="attachment_50759" align="alignleft" width="300"]
Credit: fivethirtyeight[/caption]
Donald Trump is a crook, a grifter, a liar, a serial adulterer, a molester of women, and a financial thief. These statements are factually indisputable. This article is just the latest in a long list of investigative articles all reaching the same basic conclusion about his criminality. And yet as fivethirtyeight reports over 43% of Americans approve of him.
So what are we to conclude from those two facts? I think the answer to that is that a large percentage of Americans no longer care about the integrity of their political system. They are most concerned with someone who supports their White supremacy racism, their fanatical religious fantasies, and their obsession with male dominance and the subordination of women who threaten their sense of how things should be ordered.
Put in a simpler way, the problem with America is Americans, and with criminal Trump, we are reaping what is being sown. Unless there is a huge unprecedented turnout to reject Trump and his criminality, we are going to see the end of America as we knew it growing up. Frankly, I am not sure how it is going to come out.
Trump and his children
Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty
The government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington announced Friday that after more than three years of monitoring President Donald Trump’s conduct, the president has hit a milestone, amassing more than 3,000 conflicts of interest between his businesses and his position in office.
The findings come from a CREW report detailing improper relationships between Trump, his business empire, and those trying to influence public policy—including lobbyists, foreign governments, and members of Congress.
CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder called the milestone “disgraceful.”
“Every one of the more than 3,000 conflicts of interest that President Trump has incurred through his businesses raises new questions about whether he is making decisions in the interest of the American people or his own bottom line,” said Bookbinder in a statement. “Not only does he appear to be profiting from the presidency daily, but he is constantly facing new temptations to use his office for his own benefit.”
Since Trump took office and refused to divest from his businesses, instead handing over control of the […]
No Comments
