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On 1 January 2024, the World’s Centre of Gravity Will Shift
Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar (Egypt), The Popular Chorus or Food or Comrades on the Theatre of Life, 1948 (post-dated 1951). On the last day of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, the five founding states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) welcomed six new members: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United […]
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Negotiating Faith and Capitalism: An Exploration of Contemporary Spirituality
Born into a Muslim family, I regularly encounter people who come to my house to invite me to religious gatherings. In these times of neoliberal fascism, it is interesting to note the ideological experience that piety seeks to provide. The most recent person whom I interacted with attempted to root the everyday relevance of religion […]
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The Three M’s: Mutual Aid, Magnanimity and Meals on Wheels
While August 19 was International Humanitarian Day, just a short stone’s throw from the Waldport Post Office is a hub of volunteers and one director feeding the soul of the needy on a weekly basis. For manager Nicole Person, her 10 years of service with Meals on Wheels in Waldport have been a lesson in […]
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The Profiteering Motive
Times of crisis can be glorious for some. The Great Depression bred its share of wealthy profiteers. The First and Second World Wars fostered many a multimillionaire. Over the bodies of millions, the returns for armaments companies were unparalleled. And during the current “cost of living crisis,” as it is so often dubbed, there are […]
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BRICS: A New World Economic and Trading Force?
Peter Koenig (PressTV Interview – Transcript 23 August 2023 Background The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are holding arguably one of their most important Summits from 22 to 24 August 2023 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Several new countries – up to 40 it is said, including Iran – would like to join […]
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Grandiose Narcissism of the Billionaire Class
Are we witnessing the slow, inexorable decay of the human spirit? A human life–or rather, its degraded facsimile–has become cheap, even contemptible, in 21st century American “society,” an aberrant place where freakish celebrities are role-models and sociopathic mega-billionaires are revered. Wealth-concentration has now reached such extremes that, in the U.S. alone, over 500 billionaires ride roughshod […]
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The Real Rent Scoundrels
Having spent the first 40+ years of my life paying tribute to landlords, this writer knows the crime of it all. I am not referring to the system of One landlord-One Tenant that many of the neighborhoods in baby boomer Brooklyn consisted of. That was in the 50s and 60s of my youth. It made […]
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The BRICS Have Changed the Balance of Forces, but They Will Not by Themselves Change the World
Mao Xuhui (China), ’92 Paternalism, 1992 In 2003, high officials from Brazil, India, and South Africa met in Mexico to discuss their mutual interests in the trade of pharmaceutical drugs. India was and is one of the world’s largest producers of various drugs, including those used to treat HIV-AIDS; Brazil and South Africa were both […]
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War By Other Means: Short Selling JPMorgan
When the FDIC put Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank into receivership in March, a study reported on the Social Science Research Network found that nearly 200 mid-sized U.S. banks were similarly vulnerable to bank runs. First Republic Bank went into receivership in May, but the feared contagion of runs did not otherwise occur. […]
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