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Showing posts from May 19, 2024

Beyond a naive economics to a political economy of how things actually are

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  Beyond a naive economics to a political economy of how things actually are Violence has been the basis of our economy for 500 years TOBY ROGERS MAY 19, 2024   It seems to me that we’ve been doing political economy wrong for the last two hundred and fifty years. Any honest political economy of how things actually are would start by focusing on the following aspects of society: 1. The disproportionate impact of violence . A single bullet changes the course of history for hundreds of years, dynamite can move mountains, and now a single bomb can erase a city. 2. The willingness to use violence . This is a small subset of the population. 3. The ability to organize people to commit violence on a mass scale through the use of persuasion, fear, and legitimation.   This is an even smaller subset of the population. 4. The stuff that you can get with the mastery of 1, 2, and 3   — oil fields that power the world economy, literal gold (silver, copper, platinum, and cobalt) mines, and control of

The Jewish State Is Genocidal, But Is Israeli Society Sick, Too?

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  The Jewish State Is Genocidal, But Is Israeli Society Sick, Too? ILANA MERCER Without a doubt ,  The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) is the voice of the Jewish-Israeli commonwealth ~ilana The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) continues to martyr the Palestinians, as it marches them up and down and across the  Via Dolorosa  that is the Gaza Strip. By the time you read this—and as I write—the number of Palestinians murdered, maimed and displaced by The Devil’s agents will be, already is, out of date. Jump a level of abstraction, from the torrid reality engulfing Palestinians, to meditate upon the meaning of what I just said. On the meta level—the very act of updating the numbers of the dead and displaced in the narrow time-space of a topical essay is significant. It speaks to the  industrial-levels  and methods of murder adopted by the IDF. It speaks to a genocide, ethnocide and  domicide  to which we must bear witness as best we can, with the hope that the story of Palestinian travail will end