"A catastrophic event not only belongs to the future as something that is fated to happen, but at the same time is contingent and accidental, something that might not happen - even if, from the perspective of the future perfect, it appears to be necessary." -- Dupuy
Made in China, Sued in the U.S.: the Exploitation of Civil Procedure in Cross-Border e-Commerce Trademark Infringement Cases: During the period of economic resurgence after the subprime mortgage crisis, China became a manufacturing powerhouse, with Amazon playing a pivotal role. Amazon's attractive policies lured Chinese e-commerce sellers to its platform, subsequently drawing many more customers with their competitive pricing. This surge, however, also invited Chinese counterfeiters onto Amazon's platform. Major brands responded by suing those counterfeit sellers for trademark infringement. As most Chinese sellers failed to attend trials, these cases almost always resulted in uncontested wins for the brands, thereby granting them access to the sellers' financial accounts as a means to satisfy the damage claimed. Many U.S. businesses saw this as a lucrative opportunity. They replicated the strategies by bringing suits against numerous Chinese sellers for guaranteed profits. Yet, these cases against Chinese defendants likely possess four procedural flaws: the arguable invalidity of service pursuant to the Hague Convention on the Service Abroad, the questionable jurisdiction of U.S. courts over Chinese sellers, the potential impropriety in joining numerous sellers in one suit, and the inadequate notice for many Chinese sellers.
The beautiful soul sees evil and baseness all around it but fails to see to what extent it participates in the perpetuation of that same order of things. - Alenka Zupančič
The beautiful soul attitude finds a particularly fertile ground in what many call the “infantilization” of our societies. We are encouraged to behave as children: to act primarily upon how we “feel,” to demand — and rely on — constant protection against the “outer world,” its dangers and fights, or simply against the world of others, other human beings. Perhaps something will make us see how those who offer to protect us beyond a certain age, or some immediate emergencies, are our worst enemies — that they, and not some outside brutal villains, are the social agents of domination. We have to politely turn them down, and start making, and standing behind, our decisions. Not alone, but together with those who think in a similar way. - LA Review of Books
With public on edge as Tehran vows retaliation for deadly Syria strike, stores note spike in purchases of transistor radios, generators, longer-than-usual supermarket queues: Netanyahu added: “We will know how to defend ourselves, and we will act according to the simple principle: that those who harm us or plan to harm us, we will harm.” - Times of Israel APRIL 5 2024
Hezbollah chief says Iran response ‘inevitable’ after strike on IRGC generals. - Times of Israel APRIL 5 2024
Russia condemned an Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Syria, called on the Jewish state to cease such "completely unacceptable" actions, and has requested a meeting with the UN Security Council regarding the strike. - Jpost
What we are witnessing today is the direct commodification of our experiences themselves: what we are buying on the market is fewer and fewer products (material objects) that we want to own, and more and more life experiences – experiences of sex, eating, communicating, cultural consumption, participating in a lifestyle. Michel Foucault's notion of turning one's self itself into a work of art thus gets an unexpected confirmation: I buy my bodily fitness by way of visiting fitness clubs; I buy my spiritual enlightenment by way of enrolling in the courses on transcendental meditation; I buy my public persona by way of going to the restaurants visited by people I want to be associated with. The anti-consumerist ecology is also a case of buying authentic experience. There is something deceptively reassuring in our readiness to assume guilt for the threats to our environment: we like to be guilty since, if we are guilty, it all depends on us. We pull the strings of the catastrophe, so we can also save ourselves simply by changing our lives. What is really difficult to accept (at least for us in the west) is that we are reduced to the impotent role of a passive observer who can only sit and watch what his fate will be. To avoid such a situation, we are prone to engage in a frantic obsessive activity, recycling old paper, buying organic food, whatever, just so that we can be sure that we are doing something, making our contribution. - The Guardian
Middle Class Americans Are Acting More Like Lower Income Earners
The global supply of public equity is experiencing its most rapid contraction in over two decades, with a net decrease of $120 billion this year alone, surpassing last year's total reduction of $40 billion. This trend, highlighted by JPMorgan analysts, marks a significant shift in the market dynamics, indicating a potential third consecutive year of decline in the availability of public equities. Despite expectations of economic growth and rising stock markets, which theoretically should encourage companies to issue new shares, the reality has been quite different. Companies continue to favor buybacks, with projections suggesting a continuation of this trend at a pace similar to the past three years, potentially reaching about $1.2 trillion by the end of the year. Initial public offerings (IPOs) and other share sales, however, have not met forecasts, reflecting a "persistent uncertainty" among global companies, according to JPMorgan's Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou. - Capitalism
Optimism around a rate reduction by the ECB (European Central Bank) and the Fed has been the primary driver for gains in most developed market equities since late 2023, but with Friday's declines, the STOXX 600 is bracing for its worst week since mid-October 2023. - Capitalism?
Oilprice: This month, the CEO of Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Aramco, Amin Nasser, said that the energy transition was failing and called for policymakers to abandon the “fantasy” of phasing out oil and gas, with the demand for fossil fuels expected to continue growing in the coming years.
With the meaning of colonization transformed to refer to shifting migration patterns (wrought by nothing other than the colonial structure of the global economy), changing gender norms and a homogenizing liberal culture, the far right can present themselves as champions of popular sovereignty and the self-determination of peoples. They can also stage an imaginary struggle against the ravages of transnational capital. To decolonize, for these thinkers, is to split off one kind of capitalism from another, a procedure well established within far-right thought. A globalist, rootless, parasitic, financial capitalism (imagined now as colonial) is separated from a racial, national, industrial capitalism (imagined as self-determining,or even decolonial). It goes without saying that such a separation is illusory: global systems of capital accumulation, with their entwined processes of immaterial speculation and earthly extraction, cannot be decoupled in this way. But separating the inseparable does not seem to pose a problem for reactionary thought. Indeed, it may be crucial to it. For once an imaginary antinomy has been constructed, one can disavow the hated side of it, and in this way seem to gain mastery over one’s own riven interior. - Sea and Earth
It is Yukov’s job to bring everyone back. He has collected the fragments of a man scattered across the trees and restored the scraps to the soldier’s mother. He has pulled hot human remains from a smoldering helicopter. Once, a mother asked him to please retrieve her son’s arm, which she’d heard was left dangling in a particular tree; he did. He has rooted through feces to retrieve the finger bones and teeth of men whose corpses were eaten by pigs. - The True Toll of War in Ukraine
NATO intelligence data has cast doubt on the ability of Russian forces to mount a large-scale offensive any time soon. - Pravda Ukraine
(P)arliament (in Ukraine) is no longer as unquestionably accepting of Zelensky as it once was. Davyd Arakhamia, the head of the Servant of the People faction in parliament, is on record stating that the political consensus that existed at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion has collapsed. And that means there could be a different speaker in parliament: one who might push to be made acting president. Given the deepening divisions in Servant of the People, Zelensky’s opponents may try to restructure the parliamentary majority after May 20 in an attempt to force the president to hand power to a new speaker…The main problem is that Zelensky is becoming nervous and starting to overreact to allegations of illegitimacy. - Carnegie Endowment
Official figures show up to 4 million ethnic Ukrainians — both permanent and temporary residents — living in Russia, making it by far the largest diaspora group. (Ukraine’s constitution does not give Ukrainian citizens the right to dual citizenship, so millions of people of Ukrainian origin who live abroad are unable to hold Ukrainian passports.) - Arab News
SECRETARY BLINKEN: I hear fears coming from my colleagues, from my fellow citizens, but, you know, there are often fears when there are changes in democracies, whether it’s the United States, whether it’s France, whether it’s any democratic country where there’s a change of government every four years, every six years or whatever, there’s always something, because of course you get used to what you’ve got. You don’t know what’s coming next, but what I can tell you is that this year will mark 75 years of NATO, 75 years of American administrations, Republicans and Democrats, supporting NATO. I’m convinced that it will continue, no matter what. - The US State Department