Spain’s President, socialist Pedro Sanchez, canceled a week ago the sale of 400 laser-guided missiles to the Saudis for humanitarian reasons (value of the missile contract € 9.2 million – US$ 10.7 million).
Do not be misled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values and false ideals. But you are not part of that world.
— Sai Baba
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.
— Daniel Boorstin
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
— Buckminster Fuller
My friend John is from Lewiston in Maine's second district, aka- the other Maine district. The first district-- Portland, Augusta, Kennebunkport and the wealthy towns in York and Cumberland counties-- is thriving. But huge, sparely populated, rural ME-02 isn't. The Republican congressman in ME-02, Bruce Poliquin, is a Trump enabler and a Wall Street puppet. He's thriving.
WASHINGTON — The Trump Administration and the media were positively giddy at the news: the U.S. had added 223,000 jobs in May, representing a record 92nd consecutive month of jobs growth, and reducing the unemployment rate to 3.8 percent, its lowest level since the height of the dotcom boom in 2000.
The Popular Resistance School will begin on May 1 and will be an eight-week course on how movements grow, build power and succeed as well as examine the role you can play in the movement. Sign up to be part of this school so you can participate in small group discussions about how to build a powerful, transformational movement. REGISTRATION CLOSES MIDNIGHT APRIL 30.
Cognitive dissonance in Psychology
The psychological tension that occurs when one holds mutually exclusive beliefs or attitudes and that often motivates people to modify their thoughts or behaviors in order to reduce the tension.
Anxiety that results from simultaneously holding contradictory or incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like, as when one likes a person but disapproves of one of his or her habits.
Motivated Ignorance in Politics
Why throw money at defense when everything is falling down around us? Do we need to spend more money on our military (about $600 billion this year) than the next seven countries combined? Do we need 1.4 million active military personnel and 850,000 reserves when the enemy at the moment — ISIS — numbers in the low tens of thousands? If so, it seems there’s something radically wrong with our strategy.
US stocks plummet, pulling much of the global indices down with them
Commodity trading also plummeted after Wall Street’s sudden decline this week [Xinhua]
Oil prices have continued into their third day of decline as US stocks plunge at the fastest rate since 2016.
The US benchmark West Texas intermediate dropped 0.76 per cent to $63.66 a barrel for March. Global benchmark Brent Crude fell 0.89 per cent for April to $67.02 a barrel.
A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently, half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.
— Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858, at Springfield, Illinois.
