The world’s seven biggest oil firms are projected to reap gargantuan profits of US$173 billion this year, leading to fresh calls for windfall taxes on a sector that has thrived after Russia’s war in Ukraine led to sky-high fuel prices.
The long-anticipated “hot autumn” begins as the European economy teeters on the edge of a largely self-inflicted stagflationary depression.
Last Friday (October 7), the 82-year old French writer Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature, for what the panel described as an “uncompromising” 50-year body of work exploring “a life marked by great disparities regarding gender, language and class”. A feminist and politically committed writer, Ernaux is the first French woman to win the award.
A lot of talk these days about "saving humanity." Bolivia has a pretty good initial checklist of what that is going to require. As always, when dealing with the future, capitalism stands in the way.
Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski famously describedUkraine as a “geopolitical pivot” of Eurasia, central to both US and Russian power. Since Russia views its vital security interests to be at stake in the current conflict, the war in Ukraine is rapidly escalating to a nuclear showdown. It’s urgent for both the US and Russia to exercise restraint before disaster hits.
