Matumbo

[Matumbo @Matumbo14]

@PabloLaca @mariatad @euronews And to those who say NGEU common borrowing was a one-off to face an emergency, I would say the EU now faces two emergencies: defence and energy transition. No country has the fiscal space necessary to face these emergencies on its own.

[James Talarico @jamestalarico]

200 years ago, my ancestor signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. He wrote:

“Any duty that would advance the cause of Texas I feel anxious and ever ready to perform…”

As I accept your nomination for the US Senate, I make that same commitment to you.

[Gaëlle K. @clarisselecter1]

Magistral Claude Malhuret, hier soir au Sénat.
"Un proverbe turc dit: quand un clown s'installe dans un palais, il ne devient pas roi. C'est le palais qui devient un cirque".
Son discours en intégralité (vidéo https://t.co/9dqlS9gqg1)
⬇️⬇️⬇️

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

9/ All of this was totally foreseeable. Frankly, it’s why previous presidents weren’t so stupid to start a war like this.

Trump has lost control of the war. His best course now is to cut his losses and end it. That’s the only way to prevent an even bigger disaster.

[Matumbo @Matumbo14]

This war will turn out to be a disaster for the world, the region and for the US itself, unless the TACO principle is implemented soon. But for the time being Trump has put his country’s destiny in Netanyahu’s hands, which is a huge mistake.

[European Democrats @democrats_eu]

At the Munich Security Conference, California Governor @GavinNewsom was clear: “Donald Trump is temporary.” The climate crisis is not. While Trump reopens coal plants and looks back to the nineteenth century, almost no one is seriously debating how to tackle climate change. Between ideological eco-extremism and fossil-fuel nostalgia, there is a third way: pragmatic environmentalism. Clean energy means growth, innovation and jobs – not just bureaucracy. That is the path Europe must lead.

[Matumbo @Matumbo14]

@elonmuskTRENDS YES YES YES

[Acyn @Acyn]

Macron: Europe has to become a geopolitical power. We have to reduce our dependencies through policies of European preference.

This must be the case from AI and cloud computing, critical minerals, clean tech, as well as defense industries and design of armament. Everywhere we have over-dependencies, we have to derisk our model and endorse a European preference.

[Élysée @Elysee]

Déclaration du Président @EmmanuelMacron à l'issue de la retraite informelle des dirigeants de l’Union européenne.

[Matumbo @Matumbo14]

@Matt_Pinner 0%

[Sawyer Hackett @SawyerHackett]

“When they go low, we go high” has always been misunderstood.

Today is a good example.

[Matumbo @Matumbo14]

@DisavowTrump20 💚

[Matumbo @Matumbo14]

Brilliant 😃

[Margaret Thatcher @realmrsthatcher]

Margaret Thatcher famously considered 'Yes, Minister' to be her favourite television programme, and remarked that it was somewhat true to life.

As a huge fan, Thatcher took part in a special sketch for the show in 1984 at the National Viewers and Listeners Association Awards.

The sketch, which focused on her desire to abolish economists, was co-written by Thatcher and her press secretary, Bernard Ingham.

[Protect Kamala Harris ✊ @DisavowTrump20]

RETWEET if you stand with the Obamas against Trump’s racist attacks!

[Lee Brown @leebrown2]

Goosebumps! People often ask, is Shakespeare still relevant? Here is a great example, from the Steven Colbert Show, in which Sir Ian McKellen delivers an extraordinary speech. Shakespeare’s words are timeless, urgent and important.

#Shakespeare #ianmckellen #stevencolbert

[Matumbo @Matumbo14]

@quatremer @ Jean, I don’t agree at all. She conveys the message that all Palestinians participated in the atrocities of 7/10. But that’s not true!Those atrocities were perpetrated by a group of terrorists, not the Palestinians. Palestinians are victims of both Israel and the terrorists.

[Matumbo @Matumbo14]

Ca Na Mel Ceramics Shop https://t.co/18G2oLlVXT
This is a place to be avoided unless you want to contribute to tax evasion. It accepts only cash, no cards, no electronic payments. What other reason than for tax evasion?

[Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis]

TOP ECONOMISTS IN PRAISE OF SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR FRANCESCA ALBANESE’S REPORT TO THE UNITED NATIONS: ‘FROM ECONOMY OF OCCUPATION TO ECONOMY OF GENOCIDE’

Yanis Varoufakis, Thomas Piketty, Nassim Taleb, Jayati Gosh, Michael Hudson, Giuseppe Mastruzzo, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Robert H. Wade, Christopher Cramer and Nidhi Srinivas co-sign the open letter below supporting Albanese amid US calls to remove her as the UN special rapporteur on Palestine

History teaches us that economic interests have been key drivers and enablers of colonial enterprises and often of the genocides they perpetrated. The corporate sector has been intrinsic to colonialism since its inception, with corporations historically contributing to the violence against, the exploitation, and ultimately the dispossession, of Indigenous people and lands, a mode of domination known as racial colonial capitalism. Israel’s colonisation of the occupied Palestinian territories is no exception.

The recent report by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, constitutes a major contribution to understanding the political economy of Israel’s Apartheid state, the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and, now, their genocide. As such, we believe, it must be studied and debated widely and freely.

In view of the virulently hostile and indeed intimidating letter from the US government to the UN Secretary General demanding the dismissal of Ms Albanese and the quashing of her excellent report, we felt the need to express our strong support for Ms Albanese and to encourage the UN to dismiss the shrill demands of the US and Israeli governments.

Following a well-trodden path of genocide denial and of bullying anyone who challenges the right of the colonial power to dispossess Indigenous peoples, the US and Israeli governments, with most European governments too timid to take a stance, demand that the international community turn a blind eye to the ongoing genocide and, in particular, to the key role that multinational and national corporations are playing in maintaining the Apartheid regime and enabling the subsequent genocide.

As economists we feel the duty to highlight three key findings that Ms Albanese’s report unveils with clarity and precision.

First, occupation and genocide are highly lucrative for conglomerates. These include not only the usual arms and ‘defence’ big businesses (e.g., Lockheed-Martin, the primary maker of the F35s, ELBIT, Israel’s own arms manufacturer, and Palantir, the software company whose algorithms have most likely been crucial in the selection of ‘targets’ across Gaza) but also household brand names (e.g., Caterpillar, BNP Paribas, Barclays, Allianz, Chevron, BP, Petrobas, A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S). As Israel’s defence budget doubled, with the active support of the US government, it crowded in large ‘investments’ into Israel’s killing machine across this international network of complicit conglomerates in which thousands of Israeli companies are intertwined with US, European, Korean and even a Brazilian mega-corporation. This explains why Israeli equities rose by 161% at a time of falling demand, production and consumer confidence.

The second finding in Ms Albanese’s report that deserves extensive study is that the Palestinian territories Israel occupies have functioned as Big Tech’s ideal laboratory and testing ground – a function that the transition from occupation to genocide has only heightened. No country, for instance, has given as much access to a population’s biometric data as Israel has given to IBM. Since 7th October 2023, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Palantir have been expanding their cloud capital services at a breathtaking pace. Face recognition software, target selection algorithms and automated execution systems are being tested in real time, at will, and with fewer ethical constraints than in the case of experiments on laboratory rats. Big Tech could not be happier!

The third key finding is that top US and European universities are financially dependent on remaining wedded to Israel’s Apartheid and permanent occupation/conflict political economy. Many top US and EU institutions will face serious financial difficulties if they were to stop backing Israel’s genocide. Ms Albanese’s report must be commended for drawing this sordid dependency of stellar Western universities and research institutions (including the Technical University of Munich, MIT Labs, the University of Edinburgh among others). The peoples of Europe and America have a right to know that some of their most cherished academic institutions are financially reliant on helping Israel reproduce its political economy of occupation and genocide.

In a few years, almost everyone will claim they opposed this genocide. But it is now that people of good conscience need to take a stand. As economists we stand, today, with Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur under attack by the US and Israeli governments because her recent report throws indescribably important light on the political economy of Israel’s occupation and genocide.

https://t.co/pe1JLPSkxu

[Kaja Kallas @kajakallas]

Ukraine is Europe!
We stand by Ukraine.

We will step up our support to Ukraine so that they can continue to fight back the agressor.

Today, it became clear that the free world needs a new leader. It’s up to us, Europeans, to take this challenge.

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

Kamala Harris told us exactly what was going to happen.