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SOUTH AFRICA TODAY: “We have moved from a society of control under apartheid to a society of consumption, today” he said. Consumption runs on debts: Prof Mbembe also explained that South Africa is running an economy where it makes money out of debt. “Consumer indebtedness in SA has grown from more than R350 billion in 2002 to R680 billion in 2006 with interest rate for short-terms loans of 36% per annum,” he said. “By 2008 the figure had escalated to 1.1 trillion rands,” he added. .. “The process of the ruling elite has attempted to take and domesticate its population by establishing an official distinctions between the accepted and inacceptable, what we can see and what we cannot, what can be represented and what cannot be,” he said. - Professor Achille Mbembe from the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WISER)
Vilnius, Lithuania police have detained a person suspected of having thrown bottles with incendiary liquids at the Russian Embassy on Sunday and Monday nights. - LRT.it
Germany is setting up a military base in Lithuania intended to deter Russia from further attacking its neighbors. The base is set to be fully operational with nearly 5,000 troops by 2027….Western military analysts in the West have long viewed the Suwalki Gap, the part of Lithuania's territory lying between the two, as a potential flashpoint area in any standoff between Russia and NATO. - DW
The rice theory of culture argues that the high labor demands and interdependent irrigation networks of paddy rice farming makes cultures more collectivistic than wheat-farming cultures. Despite prior evidence, proving causality is difficult because people are not randomly assigned to farm rice. In this study, we take advantage of a unique time when the Chinese government quasi-randomly assigned people to farm rice or wheat in two state farms that are otherwise nearly identical. The rice farmers show less individualism, more loyalty/nepotism toward a friend over a stranger, and more relational thought style. These results rule out confounds in tests of the rice theory, such as temperature, latitude, and historical events. The differences suggest rice-wheat cultural differences can form in a single generation. - Nature.com
FORD: Ontario may soon count student residences as homes to reach housing goal
got my first ever knock after over a year of car living
An Alabama Mercedes worker, on the new adversarial attitude toward the bosses in the ongoing union campaign: “We’ll tell them, ‘What you’re doing is wrong. We don’t want that, we want this. And we’re the workers, so yeah, we’re not your friends.’” - Jacobin & UAW
Profiting from thrift: Who’s getting rich off your secondhand stuff? “Despite the fact that no portion of an in-store purchase benefits a charity partner, Value Village nevertheless advertises that store purchases benefit charities,” according to Washington state’s court filings. - Value Village
NVA clinics are the McDonald's of veterinary medicine. ….You will be screaming into the void at your manager and issues will be swept under the rug. They typically hire from within for the manager position so chances are, that person has zero managerial experience. Your district manager will rarely appear, make many promises, but never follow through. - NVA buying up Canadian and Vet clinics worldwide and destroying them
The owner of National Veterinary Associates is shifting its specialty hospitals into a separate business that it plans to list independently on the stock exchange, potentially narrowing NVA's focus to general practice. NVA controls the third-greatest number of veterinary practices in the world, behind Mars Inc. and IVC Evidensia, having grown at blistering speed since it was acquired in 2019 by JAB, an investment firm. - Financialization
If, in our whole-hearted support of Ukraine, we end up strengthening the military-industrial complex or setting off a wider, catastrophic war, it would have to be concluded that our supposed solidarity or desire for justice has been contaminated by war lust in the first place. And the near obsession with the Putin regime (which, however odious and brutal, has limited means to undermine Europe) poses the exact danger that Žižek detects in “wokeness” — to disavow internal antagonisms within the West and project it onto an enemy “other.” - The End of The Future
DAMASCUS, Syria — Iran’s foreign minister Monday accused the United States of giving Israel the “green light” for a strike on its consulate building in Syria that killed seven Iranian military officials including two generals. - Politico
Cars in North America - our “Freedom” and our Shanties: Safe Place to Park would use a parking lot on city-owned land at the Sedona Cultural Park, a long-defunct amphitheater, to hold 40 vehicles that come in and out around work schedules. Slated to last two years, the program would be overseen by a social services organization that would vet people staying on the lot. The site, which would provide bathrooms and showers, was designed to offer people already sleeping in vehicles – in business parking lots, on residential streets and on forest roads – with a place to do so safely and legally. - We Just Need A Safe Place To Park
History does nothing inevitable; defeats guarantee no final victory.