“Lipton Matthews is an independent scholar, author of many notable essays and reviews. Born and first educated in Jamaica, Busting African Delusions is his most ambitious work. In it he argues that Africa is losing its chance to succeed China as the. workshop of the world. That is because it declines to pursue growth and wealth as it could and should. Africa is attracting foreign investment from China and elsewhere because of its relatively low wages and the incentives it offers to investors. Kenya, for instance, has created a special economic zone in Tatu City, and industrial parks are sprouting across the continent. To Matthews, however, African leaders and entrepreneurs seldom reach out as they could to appeal to foreign investors seeking new opportunities. Mostly, Africa looks backward, not ahead.” (07/18/26)
“Election deniers have spent years promoting the idea that the 2020 election was stolen. They believe Donald Trump’s speech finally proves them right.” (07/17/26)
“Several recent stories in the news underscore that, when it comes to the American judicial system and the mainstream media, President Trump and various Republicans are going to be continually painted in the worst light possible. These partisan portrayals create an advantage for the Democratic Party and all of its policies, grievances, grudges and campaigns.” (07/18/26)
“I know that the opposition party traditionally responds only after the State of the Union address. But that’s been a tradition only since 1966 (of course, it was the Republicans who started it, when Lyndon Johnson was president). There’s no reason Democrats shouldn’t demand equal time from the television networks and respond to Trump’s lies as soon as he’s done spewing them. … Of course, mounting a response would require the Democrats to be an organized political party with a self-preservation instinct and an ability to think creatively about how best to combat rising authoritarianism. And, well, ‘lmao @ Dems,’ as the kids say.” (07/17/26)
“The Spanish Civil War began 90 years ago. On 18 July 1936, General Francisco Franco, alongside fellow general Emilio Mola, led a right-wing military revolt against the democratically elected Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic. … George Orwell arrived in Spain in December 1936. He was prevented from joining the International Brigades, and instead joined up with a militia organised by the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). It was a decision that would change the course of his thinking and creative output. He travelled to Spain as an ardent anti-fascist and returned as a determined anti-Communist, or more precisely, an anti-Stalinist.” (07/19/26)
“The American education establishment is currently having a collective meltdown. If you watch the headlines closely, you can see the panic setting in across the country. This is the unmistakable sound of a broken progressive machine collapsing under the weight of its own arrogance. The radical left has engineered our educational system to prioritize ideological compliance over human formation. Reality is finally catching up with them, and the collapse is starting where the crusade began. The war on merit.” (07/17/26)
Source: Persuasion
by Damon Silvers & Matt Scherer
“The AI boom is already the largest capital investment project in history, running a price tag greater than the Manhattan Project, Interstate Highway System, and Apollo program combined. Estimates of the total cost of the data center buildout run as high as $7 trillion. The issue is not whether AI will transform our economy and society—maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But the conversation around AI’s long-term impact misses the more urgent question: whether AI companies can increase revenues and profits fast enough to pay their bills.” (07/17/26)
“So it seems the United States is looking at a reinvigorated COINTELPRO for the 2020s, this time with police drones and AI-assisted mass surveillance. As Americans become more and more hostile toward US warmongering, more and more fed up with the state of Israel, more and more convinced that their government doesn’t care about them, and more and more discontented with what unbridled capitalism is doing to their bank accounts, their society, and their world, their rulers are responding with the iron fist of tyranny. And what makes all this especially threatening is that you know whatever measures they roll out while the Republicans are running things will remain in place when the Democrats are in power, because as we have discussed here many times before, it is the Democratic Party’s job to prevent leftward movement in the United States.” (07/18/26)
“Democrats have a union problem. They have tied their political fortunes to unions, public and private, in ways that exacerbate intraparty conflict while stymieing both progressive and moderate goals. That’s not just a problem for the party. Democratic deference to unions creates economic hurdles for much of the country—almost everyone who isn’t in a union, and even some people who are—because today’s unions function as roadblocks to the future. To understand the party’s problem, consider that the two most powerful words in Democratic politics in 2026 are abundance and affordability. Both represent rival party factions.” (for publication 08/26)
