Author: nick

[ad_1] In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we’re doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation. Juan Cole For Informed Comment \Although Asian economies have been the first to feel the cut-off in petroleum from the Strait of Hormuz, China has so far weathered the resultant energy crisis. In fact, China’s economy grew at an annualized rate of 5% in January – March, and industry hummed along even more vigorously in April than it had in…

[ad_1] Photograph Source: Mtvdanilo – CC BY 4.0 They have become adept flouters of international law.  When doing so, they justify such violations with streaky, anaemic interpretations of self-defence and security.  The Global Sumud Flotilla’s encore effort to break the Gaza blockade, which has been in place with varying forms of severity since 2007, did have one meritorious claim.  After vanishing under a news cycle saturated with the Iran War, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and a global energy crisis, the unpardonably miserable plight of Gazans did make a return to the media stage. The state of catastrophic misery for those…

[ad_1] Kerala Legislative Assembly, Thiruvananthapuram. Photograph Source: Rajithmohan – CC BY-SA 3.0 Every five years, the electorate in Kerala goes to the polls to elect a new state government. One of twenty-eight states in India, Kerala has a population of 35 million and has been governed by the Left Democratic Front (LDF) for the past decade. On 4 May, the Election Commission of India announced that the LDF won only 35 seats of the 140 for the legislature and that the LDF’s historical adversary, the United Democratic Front (UDF) won the election with 102 seats. It would have been a…

[ad_1] May 8, 2026 Peter Hart Though the official deadline is still months away, on May 1 Nebraska became the first state to implement the Medicaid work requirements that are part of the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill. Given the state’s move, it is worth examining who stands to gain from the new bureaucratic systems that must be created to comply with the law. The likely immediate effects in Nebraska will be familiar. Recent research from the Urban Institute found that around 25,000 people are expected to lose Medicaid coverage. This is the most obvious effect of work requirements,…

[ad_1] Photo by Dan Gold Modern nutrition science has continued to see food through numbers. Calories, macronutrients, ingredient lists, and percent daily values have become the primary language of eating. This approach, often referred to as “nutritionism,” assumes that the effects of the food we consume can be understood by breaking it down into isolated components and optimizing those components. If the label looks right, the thinking goes, good health should follow. But human experience tells a different story. Food is not just fuel; it is not merely a list of nutrients. Meals carry aroma, texture, memory, and meaning. Cultural traditions…

[ad_1] This week’s English local elections are nothing short of revolutionary. The right-populist Reform UK has not simply gained ground in the Labour Party’s former heartlands—it is swallowing them up wholesale. The populist juggernaut is routing the mainstream, establishment parties.  In normal times, most people in the UK would pay very little attention to their local-council elections. Turnout tends to be embarrassingly low. Debates tend to focus on subjects as riveting as refuse collection and traffic-calming measures. Indeed, the phrase “historic local elections” would once have sounded like an oxymoron. But these are not normal times. In these elections, we…

[ad_1] Ultrabulk cargo ship on the Columbia River at Astoria. Photo: Jeffrey St. Clair. Dani Rodrik has impeccable credentials as an economist. He is an expert in many areas, including trade and development, and is one of Harvard University’s leading lights. In recent years, he has also been one of mainstream economics’ leading critics, one who has had no trouble accepting the many charges that have been laid at its door and acknowledging that non-economists and ordinary people have been far in advance of economists in identifying the malfunctions of the now much-derided paradigm of globalization and the ideology of…

[ad_1] If you were exclusively on a mainstream Western media diet in recent weeks, you’d be excused for thinking that the Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime now lies on its deathbed. Signs of “public discontent” are all over the place, you see. Silicon-lipped beauty blogger Viktoria Bonya attacked the government on YouTube. So did the notorious Kremlin propagandist Ilya Remeslo, fresh from a stint at a psychiatric ward. Meanwhile, the former defense minister Sergey Shoygu might be plotting a coup, according to CNN. But if you talk to people inside Russia, as this author does on a daily basis, you’ll…

[ad_1] Nobody knows more about horse racing than Donald J. Trump, so it’s a little surprising he didn’t tell us who was going to win the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. Maybe he knew and, not wanting to skew the odds, he placed a discreet bet—nobody knows more about discretion than Trump does—and quietly went to the window and collected his winnings. That I could understand. Why he hasn’t crowed about it ever, of course, remains a mystery.  The truly sad thing about Derby Day, though, is that because Trump doesn’t drink, he’s missing most of the fun. Even if he…

[ad_1] Image by Darren Halstead. As the Trump administration bulls into its second year, we await a movement that will aggressively challenge and potentially replace it. What we have now is a promising prelude to one in the guise of the anti-ICE protests and the No Kings rallies (Bernie Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy tour was an influential catalyst). These are essentially pop-up, short-lived events, snuffed by the Epstein files but recharged by the Iran War. They’ve been piecemeal, limited strains of agitation until now, but this could change if the anti-war forces continue to strengthen. Even then, though, they’ll need to…