Category Archives: Viva!

US-China trade war to cost $455bn in lost output, says IMF

1439.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=forma

Christine Lagarde says world must avoid the ‘self-inflicted wounds’ of a tit-for-tat wrangle

The International Monetary Fund has called for a speedy end to the deepening trade war between the United States and China after calculating that the tit-for-tat tariffs will cost $455bn (£357.5bn) in lost output next year – more than the size of South Africa’s economy.

Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, underlined her organisation’s growing concern at the most serious outbreak of trade tension since the 1930s and said “self-inflicted wounds” had to be avoided.

Continue reading…

Brexit Britain and Trump’s America are a betrayal of the values D-day was fought for | Martin Kettle

3500.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=forma

The D-day commemorations have never felt so uneasy. Trump and Brexit are tearing apart the bonds forged after 1945

They are saying that Thursday – the 75th anniversary – will be the last of the international D-day commemorations in which the veterans of 1944 participate. For obvious reasons that may well be so. The surviving soldiers who fought their way up the beaches of Normandy are in their 90s now, so it seems poignantly unlikely that more than a handful will return in 2024.

But there is a more political reason why this week could be the start of a less unified approach to marking the liberation of Europe at the end of the war against Hitler’s Germany. The reason is that Donald Trump’s US and Brexit Britain, though both still immeasurably and justifiably proud of the roles their predecessors played in this epic climax of the war in the west, are each in their own way turning their backs upon the European order that the invasion of 6 June 1944 made possible.

Continue reading…

Biden: Democratic candidate criticized for supporting abortion funding ban

#TimeIsUp

2665.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=forma

Campaign confirms Biden still supports the Hyde amendment, a law that bars the government from paying for abortion services

Reproductive rights groups have criticized the US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for supporting an abortion restriction called the Hyde amendment.

The 40-year-old law bars the US government from paying for abortion services, even when recommended by doctors. The measure has the practical effect of excluding abortion services from Medicaid, a public health insurance program for the poor and disabled, which nearly 17 million women of reproductive age rely on.

Continue reading…

US to label nuclear waste as less dangerous to quicken cleanup

5665.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=forma

Energy department says labeling some waste as low-level at sites in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina will save $40bn

The US government plans to reclassify some of the nation’s most dangerous radioactive waste to lower its threat level, outraging critics who say the move would make it cheaper and easier to walk away from cleaning up nuclear weapons production sites in Washington state, Idaho and South Carolina.

The Department of Energy said on Wednesday that labeling some high-level waste as low level will save $40bn in cleanup costs across the nation’s entire nuclear weapons complex. The material that has languished for decades in the three states would be taken to low-level disposal facilities in Utah or Texas, the agency said.

Continue reading…

YouTube: No, We Won’t Remove These Videos of Racist, Anti-Gay Harassment Because It’s Just ‘Debating’

hhwlypzhmu3yjbjtcplt.png

YouTube has chosen not to take action against right-wing video personality Steven Crowder after Vox host Carlos Maza posted clips of Crowder repeatedly harassing him with derogatory, anti-gay, and racist statements, which Maza says resulted in hordes of Crowder’s fans doxxing him and subjecting him to abuse on social…

Read more…

When Sheer Stupidity Undermines Racism

Trump has found his ultimate supporter:

Georgia Clark, a veteran high school English teacher in Fort Worth, had an urgent request for President Trump: She needed help pulling undocumented immigrants from her school.

“Mr. President, Fort Worth Independent School District is loaded with illegal students from Mexico,” Clark wrote May 17 on her now-deleted Twitter account, @Rebecca1939. “Anything you can do to remove the illegals from Fort Worth would be greatly appreciated,” she wrote in another tweet.

Clark was careful in her approach, she believed, and told the president she needed guarantees her identity would be protected when action was taken. “Texas will not protect whistle blowers. The Mexicans refuse to honor our flag,” she wrote.

Clark says she didn’t mean for everyone to see her thoughts and requests on immigration. She says she believed the tweets were private between her and the president.

Fortunately, this story has a happy ending:

The racist teacher in Fort Worth is fired. https://t.co/f8niJPDit7

— Emily M. Farris (@emayfarris) June 5, 2019

Not sure she’ll have what it takes to make it on the wingnut welfare circuit.

FacebookTwitterGoogle+Share