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I just noticed one of the resident liberals trying to justify his hatred of Russia with the like "we got rid of oppressive empires in Europe, now we must dismantle those in the peroiphery." I think that the topic of Empires is worth analysing in depth. Because plenty of people display much...

I'll create this thread because with Germany and Italy burdened with incompetent governments, France will be the country influencing EU direction during the coming years of crisis. If it can be directed at all. So this is bigger than France. Macron is ahead on recent polls but won't win on...

Not the game :D Which would you call the oldest human civilization? Which is the breakthrough tech for the dawn of it? Does it require written records to be counted as civilization? Of perhaps urbanization? Might artistic expression suffice? Or just took-making, which might or might not be...

Governments are supposed to be concerned, right? Paris Treaty, the UN panels, talk of green new deals... But at the same time we have governments idly consenting to, enabling, a speculative bubble on an asset class that, uniquely in the history of trade, does not exist. I'm talking all the...

The thread about the Capitol Breached thing got closed here on mid-January. That had the unfortunate effect if preventing the debunking there of two now known lies told by the media at the time, and which featured preeminently on the discussions. But it occurs to me that these lies are a story...

Seeing as the threads on the election are old news, the election is done I'm thinking that now it is allowed to talk about this? Most media is pretending nothing happened of course. But it's getting reported anyway. In the US there's a justice for the powerful, connected one and one for the...

I'm commented here that the objective of the political ideology of open borders, uncoupled as it is from any real consideration towards immigrants, seems to me to be the provision of a servant class to the upper middles classes in the (relatively) wealthy countries. This piece makes a good case...

This is a much-needed ruling, given the explosive growth of the use of this "treatment" in recent years. As we know from the past history of interventions justified with "psychiatry" or "psychology", these things tend to go through fads and then recess - leaving plenty of damaged test subjects...

I think it'd be useful to have a threat collecting the most outrageous examples of corporate oligarchic political abuses going on. Kicking it off with Amazon, posting this job advertisiement: They took it down whet it got noticed, but Amazon as not yet bought enough influence with the Internet...

I'm deliberately not putting the headline as a question. Though of course the idea is to discuss it. Was just reading another piece of news, this one from Germany, about a very efficient businessman putting out the competition and "revolutionizing" an industry... by lowering labor standards...

This section of the forum seems a bit dead. I'll try to start posting here some light articles and opinion pieces on historical subjects. One that found today and seems interesting for the parallels between economic ideologies, and more significantly, actions, 80 years ago and more recently...

I guess that apart from "left" the other political inclination I always had was for "democracy". Both have made me extremely hostile towards the kind of The Is no Alternative ("TINA") politics that the center parties" in many countries have deployed over the past 30 years. They were used to...

So Ireland joined the club of countries where traditional parties are falling from power. Except they didn't because Sinn Féin's leadership was too foolish to run enough candidate to take the seats it has won. Or should have won if they weren't. What now?

We'll probably be seeing it on the news more, the way things are going. This seems to be a good piece on the situation. Patrick Cockburn has been a reliable reporter on the region. Iraq is basically a kleptocracy, and the population has had enough: Lebanon too is going through protests. But...

I've been reading some papers on military logistics and wondering how important are some of the limitations mentioned. On railways: was it common for steam engine locomotives to require protection overnight and very frequent maintenance? And to be tied to specific stretches of railway? OR was...

Every age has its fads. Ours seems to be the "climate" invocation in whatever field of social science. Professors of "climate studies" are not content with studying the history of the climate. They seem to be trying to forcefully draw "conclusions" from it. Take this recent opinion piece...

I found three recent, and quite lengthy, studies about the economic and political history of western Europe after 1945 that are very much worth spending a few hours reading. Those interested can go here for a summary. Especially interesting is the history of choices made by the french...

This old issue has been talked about in the forum already, it tends to become a topic after every economic crisis. I'm pleasantly surprised to see it well argued now before one is even declared. The issue is stockholders, versus management, versus stakeholders. Corporations can be a kind of...

Arguing in another thread, I realized that it would be worth it having a dedicated discussion about the idea and purpose of Democracy. What purpose is Democracy as a political organization system supposed to achieve? It seems to be simply about favoring the interests of the many against the...

I came across a piece that suggests some big shift in public opinion may be under way in Puerto Rico. Protests against local government corruption, compounded by a boundless arrogance from those on top. How big are these protests, really? I haven't been noticing references in other media.