Source: Caitlin Johnstone, Rogue Journalist
by Caitlin Johnstone

“The US has removed Syria’s Al Qaeda franchise from its list of designated terrorist organizations just days after the UK added nonviolent activist group Palestine Action to its own list of banned terrorist groups. The western empire will surely find ways to be even more hypocritical and ridiculous about its ‘terrorism’ designations in the future, but at this point it’s hard to imagine how it will manage to do so. … This move comes as Sharaa holds friendly meetings with US and UK officials and holds normalization talks with Israel, showing that all one has to do to cease being a ‘terrorist’ in the eyes of the empire is to start aligning with the empire’s interests.” (07/08/25)

https://caitlinjohnstone.com.au/2025/07/08/imperial-hypocrisy-about-terrorism-hits-its-most-absurd-point-yet/

Source: Niskanen Center
by Zachary Parolin

“Poverty is typically understood as a shortage of resources relative to needs. Policy strategies aimed at reducing poverty tend to focus on the resources side of that equation, studying, for example, how cash transfers or minimum wage increases affect poverty through their increases in families’ incomes. This report, in contrast, shifts focus to the role of housing policy and local housing costs in influencing the needs side of the poverty equation. Policy strategies aimed at increasing housing supply and reducing housing costs should be viewed analogously to anti-poverty strategies focused on the direct redistribution of cash income.” (07/08/25)

https://www.niskanencenter.org/housing-policy-and-poverty-the-case-of-california

Source: Liberal Currents
by Emily Chamlee-Wright

“To some observers, Harvard’s stand might seem like it’s just Ivy League self‑regard, an affluent institution protecting its perks. That reading gets the stakes backward. What is under attack is the rule‑of‑law scaffolding that lets any voluntary association — PTA or synagogue, start‑up or labor union — pursue its mission without waiting for White House permission slips or fearing punitive retaliation. A university that surrenders control over whom it may admit, hire, or teach ceases to be a university; it becomes a subordinate creature of politicians and the ever-changing whims of election results.” (07/08/25)

https://www.liberalcurrents.com/harvards-fight-is-a-defense-of-democracy-and-civic-virtue/

Source: Cobden Centre
by Elias Moises Sánchez Flores

“During my master’s programme at the University of Leeds, I engaged in a module titled Capitalism in Practice, which often unfolded as a Marxist critique of economic systems — an orientation some lecturers candidly acknowledged. In one exchange, I posed a simple but pointed question: does Marxism offer a coherent monetary theory capable of explaining financialisation and business cycles? The answer was illuminating, not for its content, but for its absence. One lecturer conceded that no clear Marxist framework addressed the institutional mechanisms behind credit cycles or the structural fragilities of modern monetary systems. To her, as to many, financialisation appeared as an inevitable byproduct of capitalism’s evolution — an abstract drift toward finance-dominated economies. Mainstream economics, when confronted with its crises — 1980s, 1990s, 2008 — labels them ‘market failures.’ I challenged that view.” (07/08/25)

https://www.cobdencentre.org/2025/07/financialisation-as-statecraft-a-quiet-engine-of-boom-bust-and-wealth-transfer/

Source: New York Post
by staff

“Decent Americans are grieving the loss of so many lives, and so many young lives, in Friday’s Texas flooding — but unhinged lefties insist on politicizing the horror, working out their resentments or trying to blame President Donald Trump. A sick, racist former Houston mayoral appointee, Sade Perkins, called Camp Mystic, one hard-hit site, a ‘white-only girls’ Christian camp.’ What a thing to focus on. No one would care if the kids were minorities, Perkins suggested as she blamed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and ‘your friendly MAGA Trump’ for … a natural disaster. Pediatrician Christina B. Propst similarly spewed hate, saying the victims ‘got what they voted for’ (she assumes!) and wishing safety for only ‘non-MAGA voters and pets.’ Such deranged venom is the upshot of years of race-based grievance-mongering on the left, along with radical dehumanizing of Americans who happen to think differently.” (07/07/25)

https://nypost.com/2025/07/07/opinion/the-lefts-response-to-the-texas-flooding-deaths-is-beyond-depraved/