Neo-liberal Macron government in France pushes 2023 budget without parliamentary vote + French Labor Unrest Illustrates Worsening Economic Crisis Within the EU

The austerity-ridden budget was approved without a vote on after the government involved a controversial provision of the constitution. Earlier, left-wing MPs had passed several amendments to the government’s proposals

Neo-liberal Macron government in France pushes 2023 budget without parliamentary vote

Related:

French Labor Unrest Illustrates Worsening Economic Crisis Within the EU

Canadian, US Warplanes Land In Haiti With Military Equipment; Locals Warn Of ‘Foreign Invasion’

Haiti, the most impoverished country in the Americas, has erupted in political unrest, with reports in western media suggesting that a criminal coalition is obstructing the distribution of gasoline and diesel.

Canadian, US Warplanes Land In Haiti With Military Equipment; Locals Warn Of ‘Foreign Invasion’

Related:

Video: Haitians Demonstrating Against Henry, US-Canadian ‘Invasion’ Ignored by Western Media

NPR is Not Your Friend

NPR is a problem. Good and proper leftists who read Current Affairs may already realize this. “Of course. NPR (Neoliberal Propaganda Radio) is a bastion of establishment groupthink and orthodoxy that gives cover to imperialism and corporate capitalism.” By contrast, readers on the Right who find themselves consuming Current Affairs may have an equally disdainful but entirely different critique. “Of course. NPR is an elitist liberal propaganda cult that serves as a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, is openly hostile to any conservative voices, and ought to be defunded!”

NPR is Not Your Friend

IMF Tells Bolivia To Drop Its Successful Economic Model

The IMF released a report today on the Bolivian economy in which it recommends adopting drastic neoliberal measures, including; reducing workers’ salaries, cutting public investments, and ending currency controls. These policies have turned Bolivia from one of the poorest countries in the region into it’s fastest-growing economy.

IMF Tells Bolivia To Drop Its Successful Economic Model

U.S. ups the ante: are we indeed headed into WWIII and what can save us?

Gilbert Doctorow, 9/9/22

The UK and Commonwealth may be mourning the passing of Queen Elizabeth II yesterday. I am in mourning as well, but for a very different reason: the gathering of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in the Ramstein air base in Germany yesterday reshuffled the deck on Western military and financial assistance to Ukraine, raising contributions to the ongoing holy crusade against Russia from still more nations and adding new, still more advanced precision strike weapons to the mix of deliveries to Kiev. It was an open summons to the Kremlin to escalate in turn, as were the test firing the same day of a new intercontinental rocket, the Minuteman III, from Vandenberg air base in California and the unannounced visit to Kiev yesterday of not only Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who was featured in Western media accounts, but also other top officials of the Biden administration. The most notorious member of this delegation was surely Blinken’s deputy, Victoria Nuland, who had stage managed the February 2014 coup that put in power in Kiev the Russia-hating regime that Zelensky now heads.

Gilbert Doctorow: U.S. ups the ante: are we indeed headed into WWIII and what can save us?

Related:

A Former US Marine Corps Officer’s Analysis of the Ukraine War (archived, in case the original is removed)

H/T: Natylie’s Place: Understanding Russia

UK’s New Prime Minister Makes No Apologies for Favoring the Wealthy

UK’s New Prime Minister Makes No Apologies for Favoring the Wealthy

Truss also went out of her way to channel Britain’s first female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, who remains as iconic among the Tory Party base as Ronald Reagan is for Republicans in the U.S. Truss has studied Thatcher’s body language, has adopted her dress style — as Twitter users were quick to point out — and has reached for many of the same rhetorical tools. Yet, style notwithstanding, she has nowhere near the ideological consistency or heft of a Thatcher.

It will take all of Truss’s shape-shifting talents, and then some, to turn around the election ship for the Conservatives over the coming two years, which is the time span that Truss has before the next general election must be called. In the meantime, as the U.K. grapples with a deepening economic crisis, all of the new prime minister’s public statements suggest that the country is going to be dragged ever-further rightward into a deregulated, anti-union, Brexit-hued future.

God Save The UK!

Can the U.S. Kick Its Reliance on Russian Uranium?

Posted on September 5, 2022 by John McGregor

John here. France is working to bring all of its nuclear power plants back online before winter and Germany is contemplating a plan to postpone the closure of its plants. Hungary has just issued approvals for two new nuclear reactors from Rosatom. Nonetheless, Ukraine is pushing for sanctions on Russian uranium. Theoretical capacity to replace uranium with thorium won’t translate into immediate results, so any sanctions in the short term would put further pressure on energy markets.

Can the U.S. Kick Its Reliance on Russian Uranium?