alanjjohnstone
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Good news
The fast growth of plant-based alternatives to animal products could mean Europe and North America will reach “peak meat” by 2025, at which point consumption of conventional meat starts to fall, according to a report.
The study also forecasts that plant-based meats will match regular meat on price by 2023 and that nine out of 10 of the world’s favourite dishes will have realistic alternatives by 2035.
The Chinese threat to invade Taiwan is serious and more imminent than many understand, US admiral chosen to lead the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific region has warned.
China considers recovering control over Taiwan its “No 1 priority”, Adm John Aquilino, nominated to become commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, told the Senate armed services committee.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/23/taiwan-china-threat-admiral-john-aquilino
Women from the most deprived backgrounds are almost three times more likely to have abortions than women from the wealthiest backgrounds, and the gap has worsened during the pandemic.
In 2020, women from the most deprived backgrounds accounted for 16.5% of all abortions, and women from the wealthiest backgrounds accounted for 5.9%. The gap has widened since 2019, when the figures were 13.7% and 6.6%. Data suggests that the pandemic’s impact on wages may have played a role in women’s decisions on whether to continue a pregnancy.“Unintended pregnancy is a fact of life, but women will make very different decisions about whether to continue that pregnancy based on the circumstances she finds herself and her existing family,” Clare Murphy, the chief executive of British Pregnancy Advisory Service said. “Our research shows women on low incomes are feeling a deep sense of anxiety about their employment prospects and their financial precarity. At the same time, families are facing rising costs, including energy and food bills, as a result of spending more time at home. Almost two-thirds of the women we cared for who already had children told us financial factors played a role in their decision-making.”
I very much doubt we are on Finkelstein’s radar.
And anyway it would have been rejected by the Standard’s editors as they are reluctant to publish non-members.
The WSPUS may have been more receptive having a more lenient editorial policy
And our SOYMB blog would very much have welcomed it since i have admired Finkelstein for quite a while even if he is dour sounding individual. In fact, i have trouble identifying any animated speaker.
Another MMT article link. Not sure if it adds anything to the topic
https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/modern-monetary-theory/
Biden’s economic team may not have arrived in D.C. as MMT acolytes, but they will leave as its greatest practitioners. They don’t have a choice.Apparently it is all diplomatic lip-service concern about Myanmar
https://www.dw.com/en/myanmar-coup-protests-solidarity/a-56950349
Developments in the country have so far not dominated the international diplomatic agenda. The events in Myanmar were not part of the recent US-China meeting in Alaska. The UN Security Council failed to call the events in Myanmar a coup in the face of objections from China and Russia.
But the preferred option of some, more stringent and rigourous sanctions, will back-fire upon those who are most vulnerable, our fellow workers.
Melting ice and rising sea levels
https://www.dw.com/en/melting-ice-whats-the-big-deal/a-56872079
if emissions aren’t sufficiently scaled back to mitigate climate change, some researchers reckon oceans will definitely rise by at least 2 meters by the end of the century. That’s still enough to swamp the several hundred million people living below 5 meters above sea level. Another 350 million or so living higher up would have to relocate to escape regular coastal flooding…The future remains uncertain. But it’s likely that if melting isn’t slowed real soon, disaster movie scenarios might not look so ridiculous to future generations.
The irony and the hypocrisy shows over the China South Sea dispute and the supposed freedom of navigation and how NATO considers China’s access to the Arctic sea routes as a direct strategic threat to be countered
https://www.dw.com/en/nato-chief-melting-arctic-ice-could-heat-up-geopolitics/a-56954283
Biden and the lack of transparency on Border policy
The criteria to be allowed into the U.S. are a closely held secret. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has referred only to “acute vulnerabilities” that qualify families for release in the United States to pursue asylum instead of immediate expulsion.
https://apnews.com/article/photos-migrant-children-detention-center-4462413114790eebc81ba82857c475b0
Officials barred nonprofit lawyers who conduct oversight from entering a Border Patrol tent where thousands of children and teenagers are detained. And federal agencies have refused or ignored dozens of requests from the media for access to detention sites. Such access was granted several times by the administration of President Donald Trump, whose restrictive immigration approach Biden vowed to reverse.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56482881
The Scottish government has published draft legislation for the holding of a second independence referendum.
The legislation proposes using the same yes or no question as in 2014, with the date to be decided by MSPs.
And, of course, we will be reviving our answer from 2014…
I foresee not as much interest such as less registration to vote from the 2014 record numbers and more abstentions from the 2014 record turn-out.
But i might be wrong. Perhaps romantic notions of an idyllic past will prevail
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56487162
Our record on detailing the persecution of the Uyghurs is better than most of the media and governments but we should be cautious in regards to the newly-found “concern” for the Uyghurs by various capitalist countries.
Not so long ago, the USA had them imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. So easily forgotten when it suits them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_detainees_at_Guantanamo_BayFor the moment the sanctions seem to be targeting individuals but we cannot be sure they will not be extended in the future as part of a larger anti-China campaign. We should recall it was a trade embargo which was significant factor in the reason Japan went to war.
I found that even with school uniform differences was noticeable. Blazers, grey trousers, the shirts, the shoes, the schoolbags were all discernable in quality and price paid for them. People knew who came from families with money.
People don’t believe me that i was twenty-something when i first ventured into Leith, before then it was a one or two term visits to a budget shoe-shop with my mum.
Karl Korsch had something of interest to say
Marxist ‘theory’ does not strive to achieve objective knowledge of reality out of an independent, theoretical interest. It is driven to acquire this knowledge by the practical necessities of struggle, and can neglect it only by running the heavy risk of failing to achieve its goal, at the price of the defeat and eclipse of the proletarian movement which it represents. And just because it never loses sight of its practical purpose, it eschews every attempt to force all experience into the design of a monistic construction of the universe in order to build a united system of knowledge. Marxist theory is not interested in everything, nor is it interested to the same degree in all the objects of its interests. Its only concern is with those things which have some bearing upon its objectives, and with everything and every aspect of every- thing the more so as this particular thing or this particular aspect of a thing is related to its practical purposes.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/korsch/1934/why-marxist.htm
In my own words, if it doesn’t contribute to furthering the movement towards socialism, i don’t really give a damn…and i think i have been for a long time critical of the utter sterility of your own idiosyncratic views on what you think Marx meant rather than actually use him constructively in practical politics.
Any gap between theory and practice has been yours, not mine
Do you trust intelligence sources, after all, it is all about deceiving.
https://apnews.com/article/national-security-iran-only-on-ap-army-1285df40348182e1b74dc403607c5928
Iranian Revolutionary Guards were intending to stage an attack on a Washington DC army base and also plotted to assassinate a US general.
Now the Guardian hails Biden as the new JFK
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/21/joe-biden-kennedys-us-foreign-policy
