Trends This Week – Hillary Clinton latest to prove different justice scale for the elites – 07.06.16

Global forecaster Gerald Celente rips into the decision not to prosecute Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her email scandal, demonstrating once again two scales of justice: One for the elites, one for the rest of us. Elsewhere, Celente analyzes market indicators in the aftermath of Brexit. Global equity markets are in turmoil. However, the business media’s view of market mayhem is a snapshot in time dating to the June 23 “Brexit” when the United Kingdom voted to exit the European Union. Indeed, while Brexit triggered the current turmoil, Celente’s trends-eye view identifies the current market volatility in a Globalnomic® context far bigger than Brexit.

Philip Weiss – Clinton’s ‘infatuation with war’ and neoconservatism stirs misgivings on the left

As the Democratic convention approaches and Hillary Clinton tries to win over, or finesse, the progressive anti-war component of her base, many writers are expressing misgivings about her foreign policy. Not that they are Trump supporters; but they worry about being left out in the cold in a Clinton administration studded with neoconservatives. Here are three new takes on the …

RALPH NADER – How Unpatriotic is Donald Trump?

Samuel Johnson famously considered patriotism “the last refuge of a scoundrel.” His biographer James Boswell, who passed along that judgment, clarified that Johnson “did not mean a real and generous love for our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.” This could be describing Donald Trump. And yet …

Pam Martens and Russ Martens – As Big Banks Hemorrhage Capital, Glass-Steagall Is Quietly Added to Democratic Platform

The overall stock market is staging a big rally at the open of trading this morning in New York, but that is not going to calm growing anxieties over how badly systemically risky global banks traded in Friday and Monday’s two days of carnage. Watching tens of billions of equity market capital vaporize at the mega banks in two trading …

Leid Stories – Benjamin Netanyahu Trolls Africa for Big-Money Deals and Old ‘Friendships’; Obama, Biden Hit the Road (at Taxpayer Expense) for Hillary – 07.05.16

Starting with Uganda—where, 40 years ago, his older brother Yonatan was killed in an Israeli Defense Forces-led commando raid on the airport at Entebbe to free hostages being held by pro-Palestinian hijackers–Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday began a foray into East Africa that also will include scheduled trips to Kenya, Rwanda and Ethiopia and include summit meetings with leaders from South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.

Netanyahu said that his trip to the region, the first in 30 years by an Israeli prime minister, is meant to indicate a renewed interest in forging bilateral economic and strategic ties with old friends. But new fears and suspicions abound in the African world about Israel’s ramped-up foreign-policy push on the continent. Abayomi Azikiwe, editor in chief of Pan-African Newswire, discusses Netanyahu’s historic visit to East Africa.

Both President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are hitting the road this week as pitchmen for Hillary Clinton. Obama makes his debut today at a rally in Charlotte, N.C.; Biden goes a-stumping Friday in Scranton, Pa., his hometown.

Leid Stories explains says that it isn’t so much a testament of Clinton’s clout and firepower that the Top Two are campaigning for her, but yet another indication of her political vulnerability as a distrusted candidate who will be the party’s nominee later this month.

Helen Andrews – The New Ruling Class

Last fall, Toby Young did something ironic. Toby is the son of Michael Young, the British sociologist and Labour life peer whose 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy has been credited with coining the term. Toby has become an education reformer in his own right, as founder of the West London Free School, after a celebrated career as a journalist and …

David L. Wilson – Moving Beyond Bernie Sanders’ “Political Revolution”

It’s been an astonishing year for the US left. Issues that mainstream politicians would have declared “off the table” just 12 months ago — free public higher education, universal health care, the $15 minimum wage, a national ban on fracking — are now acceptable topics for public discussion. A US politician who declared himself a socialist won more than 12 million …

Veena Trehan – Clinton’s Heist of Democracy and the Voter-Driven Superdelegate and Platform Solution

Many of us have historically opposed the Republicans based on a fundamental antipathy to virtually all their policies. Their money in politics corroded their integrity, we said. And we thanked our lucky stars we were Democrats. But beyond their positions this millennium, and far more egregious, was the Republicans utter lack of respect for democracy. Who, we asked ourselves, trashes …

The world thinks Americans are violent, greedy, arrogant — and Americans agree

A worldwide survey found that majorities of people in the U.K., Canada, Spain and Australia think of Americans as violent, greedy and arrogant. The poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center, found that a median of 54 percent of people in countries surveyed associated the negative trait of arrogance with Americans. Fifty-two percent associate greed, and 48 percent say Americans are …