The Post-Partisan Emporium

  A Game of Musical Chairs John Michael Greer Some turning points in history are impossible to miss. They involve battle-cries and the clash of weapons, gatherings making decisions that can never be undone, and equally obvious events. Then there are the turning points that slip past unnoticed by most of the people whose lives they will overturn. I’ve come to think that one of those latter is taking place around us right now. One of the very few announcements I’ve seen so far didn’t involve bugles or proclamations.    It appeared in a news story covered in a few corners of the tech industry press last month. The story’s simple enough.  Ryan Breslow, founder and returning CEO of hotshot financial-tech company Bolt, laid off the company’s entire human resources department and replaced it with a smaller and more focused team with much more limited responsibilities. His explanation for the change? “We had an HR team, and that HR team was creating problems that didn’t exist,” he was quo...

  The US Empire is Retrenching, Bringing Imperialism Home Karen Kwiatkowski The US-Iran Memorandum of Understanding may be signed already. If it is, 60 days of retrenchment, rejuvenation and rest may be on tap. Donald Trump certainly needs it , and so does the world. The latest US war – for Israel, as admitted by Trump, Rubio and Hegseth – has truly changed the Middle East, but not in the way Israel intended, nor the United States. The national security states in both the US and Israel no doubt had different expectations. For Israel, accelerating its ongoing genocide in Gaza, further fracturing the West Bank, and expand the northern “border” to the Litani River, seizing a fifth of Lebanon’s territory and permanently displacing a quarter of the Lebanese population, were among them. For the United States, perhaps the fundamental objective was nothing more than please let this be the last time we have to fight a war for Israel. On the surface, this latest episode of Bomb Iran! serve...