If you go to bed at night worried about money and you get up in the morning still worried about money, you are far from alone. In 2026, financial stress is an inescapable reality for most Americans. There is still a very small segment of the population that is doing really well, but the vast majority of us are just trying to find a way to scrape by from month to month. When you work as hard as you can and it just isn’t enough, it can be absolutely soul crushing.

Over The Past 55 Years The Standard Of Living Of American Workers Has Fallen Much More Than Most People Realize

BY MICHAEL SNYDER

In October 1914, two million Ottoman liras in German gold reached Istanbul. On October 29, Ottoman warships under a German admiral opened fire on Russia's Black Sea ports. The textbook answer blames two German ships, the Goeben and the Breslau. But in the first week of August 1914, the Ottoman treasury held about 92,000 liras in cash.

This is the story of sixty years of debt that put an empire's money in foreign hands. It starts with the Sultan's first London loan in 1854 and the creditors who collected his taxes before he did. It runs through a customs rate that foreign ambassadors had to approve and two battleships that ordinary Turks believed they had paid for. It ends with an empire that knocked on every door in Europe and chose the only power that would sign.

The Goeben didn't drag the Ottoman Empire into the war. It delivered a decision the empire had already made.

After an electoral breakthrough, Israel’s Arab parties face renewed pressure to confine themselves to local issues and remain silent about the occupation, the killing in Gaza and violence in the West Bank.

Arab citizens of Israel have been told they can address crime, schools and sewage, but must remain silent about the occupation, pogroms in the West Bank and the killing in Gaza. Their electoral success has only made the demand more explicit.

Gideon Levy

Moscow has poured cold water on former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s claim that he was forced to drink vodka during a visit to Russia, saying he willingly embraced Russian hospitality and repeatedly asked for refills.

Johnson complained earlier this week that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had subjected him to a grueling vodka-drinking session beside a blazing fireplace during a December 2017 visit to Moscow, when he was Britain’s foreign secretary.

Speaking to former Colombian President Ivan Duque on his Tres Respuestas podcast about his failed attempt to reset relations with Russia at the time, Johnson called Lavrov a “ghastly man” who had made him drink a “huge amount of vodka.”

LENIN wrote his Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism in 1916, while living in exile in Switzerland during the middle of WWI. It remains one of the most influential Marxist analyses of international capitalism and continues to shape our understanding of globalisation, international political economy, dependency, and the struggle between the “imperial core” and the global “periphery” of international capitalism.

What is imperialism? And is it still ‘The Highest Stage of Capitalism?’

Global capitalism has moved on since 1916, but Lenin’s Imperialism remains a foundational text, one of the most influential analyses of the world order today, writes the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School

Marx Memorial Library & Workers’ School

THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE IN THE SPECTATOR, AUSTRALIA, WAS WRITTEN IN 2025, BEFORE ALL THE PRESENT TROUBLES IN FRANCE [APART FROM THE YELLOW VESTS PROTESTS]. BRUNO RETAILLEAU, MINISTRE DE L'INTERIEUR, IS INTRODUCED AS SOMEONE WHO IS COMPETENT... MOST LIKELY HIS REPRESSION AND THE HARDLINE AGAINST THE SOCIAL BENEFITS OF THE POPULATION AND AGAINST MIGRANTS, MIGHT HAVE HAD SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT OF THE YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY....

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Bruno Retailleau’s quiet revolution
BY James Tidmarsh

20 May 2025

Power does not rest in the Congress. It does not rest in the courts. It does not even rest in the imperial presidency. It rests in the hands of Wall Street financiers, Silicon Valley, private equity firms, the fossil fuel industry, the predatory health care and pharmaceutical giants, agribusinesses and, most of all, the war industry.

Chris Hedges ScheerPost

The belief that Democrats will dismantle a system designed to serve the rapacious greed of the war machine and the ruling billionaire class is a mirage.

Before Vladimir Zelensky arrived in Dublin on a mission to squeeze more cash from EU leaders, a raid by anti-corruption agents in Ukraine illustrated exactly where the money forked out to Kiev ends up.

On November 9, neo-Nazi-linked Ukrainian journalist Sergey Sternenko (more about him below) published photos and videos from a penthouse apartment in the city of Dnepro, which he said belonged to “a person who stole money from the Ukrainian budget.” 

Crystal chandeliers hung over marble staircases, life-sized reproductions of Greek statues towered over a desk weighed down with trophies, statuettes, and apparently a figurine of the apartment’s owner himself. Police found a Rolls-Royce in the apartment’s parking garage, an indoor swimming pool, and a terrarium housing a live crocodile.

"60 SECONDS" - Sean Duffy Grounds the Country

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z93NPLx8Xao

PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

The US is behaving like a mafia boss in the Middle East, forcing countries to cooperate or risk being attacked, Miko Peled, founder and director of the Palestine House of Freedom, said on Friday.

He was speaking in an RT panel discussion on recent remarks by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who blamed Iran for instability in the region.

Peled said the Gulf states fear that defying Washington could leave their countries in ruins, pointing to US military interventions in recent decades.

“The US operates like a mafia boss,” he said. “If you’re a leader in the region and you know that if you don’t comply, you’re going to end up like Iraq... and Libya and Syria and Yemen… your country is going to end up in ruins.”

An estimated 50,000 people died from heat-related causes across European cities this summer. Yet climate denial persists, driven not just by fossil-fuel interests but by political identity and manipulation.

The 50,000 heat-related deaths in Europe this northern summer far exceeded the previous high of 29,000 in 2022.

Noel Turnbull

The Lord Ricketts warrants scrutiny because his RUSI leadership role places him at the center of an institution that has been criticized for advancing pro-UAE framing across strategic policy areas. The evidence does not show direct UAE funding to him personally. The more relevant issue is that he operates inside a think tank environment where UAE-friendly narratives carry institutional legitimacy and are presented as serious strategic analysis.

The Lord Ricketts

Reason for Blacklisting & Related NGO

Academic journals routinely reject AI-generated submissions. But if an article meets rigorous standards and its origins are disclosed, what exactly is lost by publishing it?

Peter Singer

From 1 July 2019, the whistleblower protections in Part 9.4AAA the Corporations Act 2001(Corporations Act) have been expanded to provide greater protections for whistleblowers who report misconduct about companies and company officers. The reforms to the regime were contained in the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enhancing Whistleblower Protections) Act 2019,which received Royal Assent on 12 March 2019.

ASIC has issued two information sheets for people to understand who is eligible to access the whistleblower rights and protections under the Corporations Act and how we will respond to reports of misconduct from whistleblowers: